


Comes to Dust

by tabaqui



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-05
Updated: 2013-02-05
Packaged: 2017-11-28 07:02:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/671615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabaqui/pseuds/tabaqui
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The apocalypse came and went.  Not quite as bad as they thought - but bad enough.  And everything seems quiet, until one big storm....</p>
            </blockquote>





	Comes to Dust

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from a song sung during Shakespeare's [Cymbaline](http://www.johnderbyshire.com/Readings/cymbeline.html). I also quote a couple of lines from Tanith Lee's [The Book of the Beast](http://www.minstrel.org.uk/papers/book-reviews/TLBeast.htm). The song that plays in the story is The Ink Spots' [I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7AZIvDD5Lw). Originally posted in March of 2010.
> 
> [Original art](http://kezley.livejournal.com/5891.html) by Kezley.  
> Beta'd by Darkhavens. Although marked m/m, it is mostly implied, and never explicit.

 

Here the land ended, falling away and away in stepped slopes of rock, colored crimson and slate, violet and saffron by the late-afternoon sun. South-west, the river flowed out and over the Rim, falling into shadow and movement. The sea was there, below – one thousand feet or more, pulsing like a faint heartbeat, all but lost in the dry rush of the waterfall.  
  
Dean stood up in the stirrups of his saddle, stretching his legs and twisting a little to ease the stiffness in his back. Seven shifted under him, rumbly sound of discontent in his chest.  
  
"Chill out," Dean said, settling again. He put his hands behind him, fingers laced, and pushed his arms out straight, rolling his shoulders. Seven shifted again, stretching his neck out and lashing his tail. "Bitch," Dean muttered, and Seven twisted his head around to look back at Dean with an expression that clearly said ' _Jerk_ '.  
  
"Sam, are you trying to secretly corrupt my horse?" Dean called, and Sam looked up from his crouch on the Rim, quick grin that dimmed a little as he pushed himself to his feet.  
  
"All his bad habits are your fault," Sam said, rubbing his hands together. A thin puff of dust drifted away from them, nearly invisible in the thickening light. He limped over to where his own horse was disinterestedly lipping a half dead shock of sage, gathered up the reins and heaved himself into the saddle, mouth tight. "Storm's coming."  
  
"Yeah, I can see that. Think we can make it to Hole-in-the-Wall before it hits?"  
  
Sam stared west, squinting a little against the long, honeyed rays of the setting sun. The far horizon was hazy – dark; charcoal and grey-green smudges scraped over a yellowing canvas; a slow-building storm, days off, yet, but one that was going to pack a hell of a punch. The sea, so far down, was an endless, rumpled sheet of slate-blue, broken by countless shoals of weathered rock. All that was left from when the land had sheared away from itself, collapsing into the crater they called Whale Deep, the sea rushing to fill it in.  
  
"Yeah, we will. Best go now, though."  
  
"Let's go, Seven." Dean lifted the reins, tugging ever so slightly and Seven turned, head first and body following. A pressure of knees and heels and Seven moved into a quick, skimming lope, only showing his irritation in one hopping kick. Behind him, Dean could hear Sam laughing and he lifted his hand and gave his brother the finger before settling in for the days-long ride.  
  
  
  
Hole-in-the-Wall had been around since before the Cataclysm, and probably would be around long after the sun had burned out. Jonah the Walker had found Hole-in-the-Wall on one of his walks and decided to make it his nest; like a magpie, had carried back all his looted treasure. Amongst the broken anthodites, he'd stacked questionable canned goods and salvaged electronics, rotting clothes and mildewed books and worthless strings of diamonds. There were boxes full of pencils and baskets full of shoes, jars of rusted screws and nails and washers.  
  
Dean, of course, loved the place. Sam sent a tired smile after him as Dean stepped off the last riser of the staircase and strode happily away into the gloom, lantern bobbing. Like a kid in a candy store, Sam thought. Hell, there probably _was_ candy in there, somewhere. Sam just groped for one of the old folding chairs Walker kept by the stairs and sat down, easing his aching leg out straight, setting his own lantern on the third step up. The cave system was mostly level, but Walker had blocked up the old, easily-accessible entrance and made a new one, less obvious, and with a set of narrow stairs he could defend himself, if need be. They'd played holy hell with Sam's leg.  
  
"Storm coming," someone said, and Sam jumped a little, looking around. A disheveled blonde head popped up from behind a listing stack of crates and Sam relaxed. It was Tick-tock, one of Walker's kids. And if Tick-tock was near, pretty soon –  
  
"Storm coming." Clock popped up beside Tick-tock, identical mussed blonde hair, identical Cupid's bow mouths. Identical twisted spines and humped shoulders and clubbed, clumsy legs. The Cataclysm hadn't been kind to them.  
  
"You're right, storm's coming. You ready?" Sam asked, and the girls shuffled out from behind the crates. Their skinny bodies were muffled in moth-eaten sweaters and worn corduroys against the chill of the caverns.  
  
"We're ready, we gots it all locked down tight," Tick-tock said.  
  
"Katy bar the door," Clock added, and then they both grinned, gap-toothed and unnerving in the lantern-light.  
  
"Better run tell your dad we're here," Sam said, and they shuffled away, little clasped, clawed hands swinging between them. Sam sank back into the chair, letting his eyes go shut for a moment, using both hands to knead the aching muscle and bone of his left thigh. He could hear Dean muttering to himself somewhere in the depths of the cavern, little clanks or thuds as he moved things around – dug down into a box. A moment later, Dean wandered out of the gloom and put his own lantern down next to Sam's.  
  
"They gone?"  
  
"They're just little girls." Sam sat up, letting his leg go – not missing the look Dean gave him, exasperation tinged with concern.  
  
"Creepy little girls, Sam." Dean was rubbing his thumb over a spindle of wire, brass or maybe copper.  
  
"You're such a baby," Sam muttered, and Dean tossed the spindle at him, flash of a grin. Sam caught it and mimicked Dean, running his finger over the ridges of the wrapped wire. It felt good. Whole. No corrosion. Sam tucked it away in a pocket of his coat.  
  
"So, Tick-tock Clock tells me the Winchesters are here!" Jonah the Walker's voice boomed out of the dark, and a moment later he hove into view, all whipcord and sun-lashed skin, somewhere between forty and one hundred. He had a lantern in one hand, a child in the other. The child was tiny – new-born sized – and Sam abruptly didn't want to see it. Each child of Walker's fifteen children had been born with more and more devastating defects. The last had only lived a few weeks, silent and sickly and nearly motionless, trapped in a poisoned body. Fuck only knew what would be wrong with this one.  
  
"Storm," Dean said, his voice clipped and hard, and Sam knew he was thinking the same thing.  
  
"Eh-ya, I saw that. Come along in, then. You got your horses stabled?"  
  
"Snug as two bugs." Dean lifted his lantern up, fiddling with the wick a little as Walker stepped up closer and shifted the baby.  
  
"Meet my newest. Haven't named him yet. Thinking on Clove, or maybe Quince." He tipped the baby up and out, the blanket falling away, and Sam forced himself to look. Then looked again, because the baby seemed perfectly all right. Walker grinned at him. "Got me a new missus. T'other one decided she didn't want no more kids, so she went back to her people. This new missus, she throws perfect ones."  
  
"So I see." Sam stood up, wincing, and grabbed his lantern – watched as Dean chucked the baby under the chin and followed Walker into the shadows. Sam sighed and did the same.  
  
  
  
 _Here, along the Kármán line, sixty-something miles above the world, everything changes. Trackless blue becomes indigo, then plum, then ink. The stars begin to glow; pinpricks of heat in the gathering dark, and the white-noise roar of six billion lives become the faint, far hissing of the sea, the rushing wind. Here, gravity seems to relent, and finally – He can soar.  
  
And He does, up and over, wings as vast as the vault of the sky unfurling in a scatter of impossible light. The Infinite calls, and for a moment He is tempted, so tempted. The voice of the universe is like whale-song, echoing and mournful; Leviathan adrift and lonely in a stellar sea.  
  
But...the Other calls, too. Like to like, light to light, and He cannot say no. Will not. And so He folds himself in and in, a javelin of pure, heatless brilliance, and He falls.  
  
Again._  
  
  
Dean came awake with a jerk, the rush and heat and pressure of the dream snapping off like a switch, leaving him in a smothering silence. He pushed himself slowly over and then up onto one elbow, forcing himself to breathe, slow and deep. Around him, everything was still; the broken stone walls of their shelter a charcoal sketch against the darker night. The fire was a low, sullen shimmer of coals cupped close in the earth and Dean reached out and pushed at this stick and that, waking it.  
  
He watched as new wood caught, tongues of flame mouthing along the broken ends. Opposite him in the mellow light, Sam was a long line of amber and rust and dusty tan. Strands of hair lay across his closed eyes and red-gold glinted in the short hairs growing along his jaw and chin.  
  
Dean found his canteen half-buried under saddle and blanket, screwed the lid off and took a long drink. The water was ice-cold, the canteen radiating it, and Dean's breath puffed white as he exhaled. Something shifted in the darkness, faint susurrus of skin on sand, and Sam's eyes opened.  
  
"Dean?"  
  
"Dreaming," Dean said. He took another drink and closed his canteen. Seven and Toto, Sam's horse, shifted a little in their corner, low wuff of breath and the click of hoof on stone. They'd made camp in the ruins of a little church, three wind-abraded walls and the stumps of a fourth, a rough approximation of doors and windows. It was enough. Intention counted more than the actual, and the lines of salt and sigils that curled around the four of them were ten times stronger than any building would be.  
  
"Clowns or midgets?" Sam asked.  
  
Dean grinned, shook his head and yawned, working his toes in their thick socks down deeper into his bedroll. Warm enough, and comfortable enough, and tired enough to just slip back down. "Flying," Dean said, and Sam nodded. He knew what it meant – had his own dreams to contend with. "Well, couple more hours to dawn," Dean added, and shoved his canteen away.  
  
Sam mirrored him, coming up on one elbow and digging out his own water, wiping wet lips on the back of his hand. The sleeve of his flannel shirt was fraying, soft and fuzzy around the buttonhole and along the hem. There was a distinct little noise out in the darkness, like the mewl of a kitten, and Sam's jaw went tight, teeth gritted. The horses huffed displeasure, jostling each other.  
  
Dean frowned, irritated – not yet angry. "There's your shadow," he muttered.  
  
A figure hovered in the crumbled doorway of the church, crouched on lean haunches, clawed hands scuffing in the sand and stones. Daring itself to almost-not-quite touch the wards, which rippled and roused themselves, gleaming faintly in the dark. "Ssaaam...." it crooned, a lisping sing-song.  
  
Sam drank again, capped his canteen and lay back, arms tucked under his head, gaze fixed on the scudding remains of the storm-wrack that still cluttered the sky. Five-day blow and now, nearly a week later, the air was still wet with it – the wind still fresh and fierce out on the open plateau. "Go away, Slink."  
  
"Bad storm, Ssam. Bad. Stirred things up, tore things down, broke things loose."  
  
"We're all right. You should go." The thing shifted, lifting whiteless eyes to the sky for a moment. The low lights of the fire gleamed there, sparking red. The thing was black, with skin like soft, buffed leather; slatey-blue-grey on the palms and soles and lips, on the very obvious male genitalia that hung between naked thighs. The ragged mane of hair was cobweb, white and tangled around cat-pointed ears. Black, curved nails clicked against the door-jamb and he yawned, showing the inside of his mouth. Pure snow white, tongue like a narrow white petal and teeth like shards of black ice. He wasn't as warped as the Walker's children – wasn't hideous in any real way – but he made Dean's whole body shiver in intense, bone-deep dislike.  
  
"You could come out. Saaam, come out."  
  
Dean scowled at the wheedling tone – the way Slink's voice lingered over Sam's name. Caressing it.  
  
" _No_ , Slink." Sam sat up, looking at the creature with a little frown, and the sand inside the wards stirred, tiny eddies.  
  
Slink flinched back, hands coming up, and then sank back down. His thin tail whipped up – curled around one bare thigh. "Not safe out here, to do that," Slink said. "You'll draw attention."  
  
"And you don't?"  
  
"Oh, no, no, no. _No_ , Sam. I'm so very careful, I am, so careful, I would never...." He ducked his head and looked up at Sam through white lashes and tangled, moonlight hair. Doe-eyed and pretty, if you looked objectively. Inhumanly so. But the body was all lean muscle and bone, a boy's body, just tilting over into manhood, hairless and unlined. Centuries in his gaze. "I wouldn't hurt you, Sam, never hurt you, never hurt Ssam...."  
  
"Get out of here, Slink," Dean growled, warning clear in his voice, and the wards rippled again, glimmering a little brighter. Slink hissed, pretty face gone ugly for a moment, tail lashing. Sam gathered up a handful of dust and said something over it, low mumble of fractured Latin. He lifted his palm and blew, and the dust plumed up and out, light as smoke and dully shimmering. Slink recoiled, casting Sam a look of betrayal and then was gone, scatter of sand and pebbles, that little cat-call sound echoing.  
  
"Think he'll be back?" Dean asked, and Sam turned over, squirming down into his bedroll, shoulders hunched.  
  
"Not tonight. Storms always stir him up, though." Sam yawned and closed his eyes, and Dean lay down again, settling himself. "Home tomorrow."  
  
"Yeah." Dean shoved a stick a little further into the fire and then tucked himself down, closing his eyes and willing himself back to sleep. In a little while, it worked.  
  
  
  
  
  
Home was an old hunting lodge that backed up to canyon walls of quartzite and sandstone; tiger-stripes of buff and tan, slate-blue and grey, crystal and rust and verdigris-green. A river wended past, close enough for fishing, not so close that they needed to worry about flooding. There had been a dam once, miles to the south, and a reservoir, but it had broken years ago. Now the gorge was deeper, and the river a little wilder.  
  
They'd first stayed there when Dean's third horse had galloped into a rabbit-hole and snapped a foreleg. Dean had ended up under it, deadly grey-blue and bleeding, and Sam grimly not panicking. After two days in a tent, with winter heavy above them in down-grey clouds, Sam had gone out in a desperate search for better cover. Four turns of the river had revealed the lodge, weathered pine logs and fractured windows, the debris of years in the corners but a good, river-stone chimney that still drew and only a few holes in the roof.  
  
They'd stayed through the winter, making do and patching holes, finding a cave in the cliffs that led back and around and down, a handful of tunnels and rooms, dry and empty and perfect for long-term storage. By spring, the lodge was home, their name-signs and wards carved into the massive Ponderosa pine that stood sentinel by the south-west corner of the porch, their own blood and spell-work rubbed into the threshold and window sills.  
  
They'd made the long journey back to the Dakotas that spring, back to their sometimes-home at the Mustang Ranch, trading off riding and walking. Dean had needed another horse, and they'd had possessions to gather, scattered in half a dozen caches and temporary camps. It felt good, finally, to settle into a place of their own.  
  
Sam heaved a little sigh of relief as the first glimpses of home came into view: a length of tall cliff with a notch near the top, the dark green spike of the pine. His leg was aching, steady and sharp, and all he wanted to do was sit down and not get up again for a week. The river was chest-high on the horses, the ford treacherous with stirred up debris. On the other side, the climb up to the lodge was long, the trail curving and meandering through a cluttered landscape of sandstone and argillite that had been under water for decades. The sun, two hours into the sky, was a heatless silver coin in the tawny blue.  
  
Nearly there, the trail went between two crooked fingers of stone, carved with wards, inset with cold iron and silver and lead. Beyond them was another stone, flat and broad, head-high when they were mounted. And someone was there, waiting. Sam heard Dean's exasperated huff of breath and grinned to himself. Storms brought out more than Slink. They rode through the upright stones and Dean touched his heels to Seven's sides, as if to hurry him. Seven ignored him.  
  
"You've been gone a long time."  
  
"Just the usual, Malak." Dean squinted up at the figure, frowning, and Malak frowned back. It looked more petulant on Malak's face; the pretty features of a child sulking rather than anything remotely threatening.  
  
"But it was a bad storm. It did damage."  
  
"They all do. _Damnit_ , Malak," Dean snapped as the being extended the flights of one wing nearly into Seven's face, making the horse throw his head up and twitch sideways, ears flattening.  
  
"Dean, you have to be careful. You should be _here_ during storms, where it's safe." Malak dropped off the stone and stood there, the wings half-open, threat and agitation. Sam reined Toto back and just watched, amused. Malak, like Slink, was a narrow-boned, long-muscled being, all sinew and tendon, hardly any bulk. The wings were soot and dove-grey and white, ragged and half-insubstantial, three times as big as the body that carried them.  
  
"Mal, stop freaking out my horse, okay? You know we ride the Rim this time of year. And you know we're safe. Now are you gonna get out of the way so we can get home? Sam's leg hurts."  
  
"Oh, don't you bring _me_ into this," Sam said, and Malak shifted on bare, narrow feet, looking uncertainly at Sam, the wings drooping. His pale skin was dappled, weirdly, by fading bruises, little green smudges all down his ribs and right hip.  
  
"I'm sorry, I just...I worry. There are things...." Malak hugged naked arms around naked torso, his ink-dark hair tangled across his face. It was long, past his shoulders and shot through with iron-grey. "Someone's here," he added, tipping a wing toward the lodge, and Sam and Dean both looked up, scanning what they could see of the building.  
  
"Who?"  
  
Malak shrugged – stepped carefully around Seven's head and came up close to Dean, reaching out hesitantly to rest his fingertips on Dean's stirrup leather. "I don't know. Just someone. No one bad."  
  
Seven shifted and Malak's fingers lost contact, and Dean sighed. "Okay, thanks for the warning. Just – get on outta here now, okay? You freak people out."  
  
"I'm glad you're home," Malak said, low. He shot a quick, intent look at Sam and then stepped back. The wings lifted and beat and a moment later he was gone, not really _flying_ , but disappearing all the same.  
  
"That crush just never gets old," Sam said, grinning. He urged Toto up close to Seven and Dean struck out blindly, whapping Sam across the knee.  
  
"Just shut up. Should have said your leg was hurting so much."  
  
"I just wanted to get home."  
  
"Yeah, me too." Dean urged Seven forward and Toto fell into step and they climbed the last fifty or so yards of the trail together, wondering what was waiting for them at home.  
  
  
  
The camps and ranches and settlements that made up the post-Cataclysm world had started a sort of Pony Express. It was a web rather than a straight shot, and there were no prizes for speed. But it got information out, slow and steady, and it kept everyone more or less up to date. Like Sam and Dean, the Express followed the long, ragged curve of the Rim south-west and west, and went north nearly to Canada. East was the great, turbulent roil of muddy water that was now the Mississippi; no one crossed its mysterious, fog-laced depths. South-east was the vast Delta that went out to the sea, and South-south-west was Dust Bowl, lifeless and bleak. Currently, 37 riders could complete the circuit in a little under four months, and one of the newest of them was sitting on the Winchester's porch steps as they rode up to the house.  
  
His horse was drop-tied at the foot of the steps, saddled and ready to go, and when Sam and Dean crested the small rise before the house, the boy stood up, worn felt hat in hand.  
  
"Oliver," Dean called, lifting a hand, and Oliver sketched a wave back. He was thin and gawky and hatchet-faced, just starting to show a beard. The Cataclysm had given him pointed ears and too many long fingers, with too many joints. His nails always needed cleaning.  
  
"Sir. Sirs." Oliver shuffled his feet and came down the steps, fending off Seven's inquisitive muzzle. "I slept in the stable. Hope you don't mind."  
  
"It's fine. You have something for us?" Dean swung down off Seven with a tiny groan, stiffer than he liked from the cold and the weeks-long trek along the Rim.  
  
"Yeah. From Mama Lena." Oliver reached into his coat pocket as Sam eased himself down by inches, his face set in that non-expression that he got when he was in pain. Dean dropped Seven's reins and watched Sam lean into Toto and breathe, and Toto peer around in obvious curiosity, nosing a little at Sam's ribs. Oliver coughed, and Dean looked back at him. He was holding out a thick square of folded paper.  
  
"She said wait for an answer, sir."  
  
"Hey Oliver, do me a favor, would ya? Take the boys over and get their gear off and get 'em a drink, okay?"  
  
"Yeah, sure. I mean – yessir." Oliver crammed his hat onto his head and reached for the reins while Dean dragged first his saddlebags and then Sam's off the horses.  
  
He gave Seven a little push. "Go on, now, and behave." Seven shook his head violently, huffing, but he walked off sedately enough, tail switching.  
  
"Spoiled rotten," Sam muttered. He was half way up the porch steps, leaning on the rail and nursing his leg along, and Dean went up two at a time, digging down into an inner coat pocket for the key and getting the door open before Sam was off the last riser. Looking down, he checked that the salt trough was full and untouched – ran his fingers briefly over the wards cut into the jamb. Then he was pushing the door wide and stepping aside so Sam could come in, shivering a little at the chill of the place.  
  
"Here, you read this – I'm gonna get the fire going." He handed the letter off to Sam, who limped over to his chair and settled with a groan. "Idiot."  
  
"Bite me," Sam said, cracking the wax seal and unfolding the stiff, thick paper. Rag paper, handmade by Mama Lena herself, creamy-tan and flecked with bits of color. Dean dropped the saddlebags in a heap by Sam's chair and crouched down to assembled pine cones and dried grass and bark into a tipi shape in the fireplace. He dug a match out of the copper box screwed to the river-stone surround. The tinder lit easily and he piled on narrow sticks and than thicker ones until he had a good blaze going, heat spreading out in comforting waves. Three good, seasoned pine logs were the last to go on, to burn for hours and make a coal-bed for the night. From his chair by the hearth, Sam shifted and rattled the paper and Dean stood up and leaned against the mantel, basking.  
  
"You're blocking my heat."  
  
"Poor baby." Dean moved over and Sam propped his leg on the ottoman made of hide and bone and wood – opened his coat to the warmth and smoothed the letter across his thigh. "What's it say?"  
  
"Says demon-sign. She's seeing demon-sign, and a couple of her kids had visions."  
  
"Fuck." Dean gnawed on his lip, contemplating that. Demons were _gone_. Had been for years. To have them come back.... "She sure?"  
  
"She knows as well as we do. What...what do you think it is?" Sam looked up, worry tracing lines across his forehead. He had silver in his dark hair, strands at the temple – all through the length. Just a few – just enough. Dean had his share, as well.  
  
"I think...." Dean rubbed his hand over his face, tip of his nose cold, stubble rasping on his chin. "Fuck, I think we need a drink. And bed. Think about it tomorrow."  
  
"Dean –" Sam stopped himself. Deliberately folded the letter and lifted it up and Dean took it and tucked it under the charm-box on the mantle.  
  
"I'm gonna go take care of the boys. You write and tell her we're coming. Soon as we can."  
  
"Yeah. Yeah, okay." Sam sighed and ran his hands back through his hair, wincing at tangles. "Why _now_? Is it all...starting again?"  
  
"Why ever? Whatever it is, we'll figure it out, Sam. You know we will."  
  
"Sure. Yeah, we will." He eased his leg on the ottoman a little and looked up at Dean, all wide-eyed and fake-pathetic, and Dean rolled his eyes.  
  
"Yes, Sam, I'll get the writing box for you. Don't pull the sad eyes on me."  
  
"You're _so_ whipped," Sam said, smirking, and Dean whapped him on top of the head as he went past. But he didn't deny it, either.  
  
That night, Dean lay on his back, his gaze lazily tracing the devil's trap on the ceiling. It had taken them days of careful, patient work, hammering iron nails into the painted lines. Five nails wide, heads overlapping. Now it gleamed faintly, firelight and its own, intrinsic power. It was safety – known and tested and enduring – and Dean wondered when he'd gotten so.... "Soft," he muttered, lip curling in disgust.  
  
Beside him, Sam shifted with a little hiss, moving under the warm weight of quilts and old Army wool and bearskin. "You're not soft. Idiot." Sam murmured. His socked foot bumped Dean's under the layers of covers and Dean bumped back. "Just 'cause you wanna stay home...knit me more socks...."  
  
"Shut up." Dean's gaze traced the trap again, automatic. "We just got home," he said finally, knowing how that sounded – hating how that sounded. But Sam's foot bumped his again, a little harder.  
  
"Yeah, I know. You think I wanna go tearing off to Mama Lena's any more than you do?" They lay in silence for a bit, the only noise the soft hum and hiss of the fire. "Maybe those Lakeland boys...."  
  
"You know they're too green for this. Hell, _everybody's_ too green for this. Fucking...demons." Dean twisted in the bed, scooting down a little – a little closer to Sam. "You know we gotta."  
  
Sam sighed – pushed at his pillow and did his own scooting, feet and one knee and the back of his hand touching Dean. "I know." There was a soft, sliding thump on the roof, and a little noise like a bird, startled, and Sam huffed out a small laugh. "I guess you put that ward on the chimney?"  
  
"Didn't want Malak making a fucking nest up there," Dean muttered, grinning into his pillow. He deliberately closed his eyes, making his breath come slow and even. After a little while, imperceptibly, he drifted to sleep.  
  
  
  
Mama Lena's was a good eight days ride south-east, to what used to be Steamboat Springs. She'd founded her orphanage in a log-built bed and breakfast that had weathered the Cataclysm almost as well as Sam and Dean's house, and in the years since she'd started taking in kids, she'd added to the structure, building on more rooms and then a school and a hospice. She sent her 'foundlings' out to scour the countryside for books. Mama Lena had the biggest – and the only – library in a thousand miles or more.  
  
The home office of the Pony Express was there, too, with a rambling stables and sorting room, and a hot springs kept exclusively for the tired horses to soak their road-weary legs. There were two smaller springs for orphans and guests, and it was the thought of sitting up to his neck in steaming-hot water for as long as he wanted that got Sam up and in the saddle on the sixth day. Snow had dusted down in the night, crisp and powdery, and the air was like iron, solid cold that pounded straight through his hurt leg. He stood warming the saddle blanket and himself over the fire while Dean tied the bed rolls up and drank the last of the chicory they'd brewed in the pot.  
  
"You good?" Dean asked, and Sam took in a long lungful of blade-sharp air.  
  
"Yeah, I'm good. Go fill the woodbox; I'll get the horses geared up."  
  
"Sure," Dean said, but he stood for a long moment just watching Sam, until Sam sighed and pointedly turned his back, whistling two long, low-high notes to call the horses in from their morning antics. Mostly they were good, not minding sharing the way-station shelter overnight, but by morning they were definitely too twitchy to put under saddle until they'd been allowed a little time to work out the kinks.  
  
Toto came into camp first, head up and picking up his feet, acting more skittish than he was. His gunmetal grey hide had a dusting of snow over the pale dapples on his rump and Sam held out the brush in invitation, knowing the gelding wanted a brushing more than he _didn't_ want to be under the saddle.  
  
Toto leaned with a groan of pleasure into the brush Sam wielded, his head dropping a little as Sam ran it over his withers and back. As Sam brushed dried mud off Toto's dark legs, he could hear Seven crashing around in the brush, making Dean swear and shout at him. He got Toto's blanket on, and then saddle, saddlebags and bedroll, tying the leather laces tightly. Then he lifted up the headstall and Toto snorted and shifted and blew down his nose, eyeing Sam and the braided leather with equal disdain.  
  
"C'mon, buddy. You know you wanna. We're gonna see Mama Lena. All the molasses candy you can eat," Sam coaxed. Toto's ears were tracking the noise Dean and Seven were making – a hell of a lot of noise, really – and Sam dipped into his coat pocket for the little lump of dried apple he'd stuck there at breakfast. "C'mon, pretty boy," Sam wheedled, and Toto finally crowded up close, lipping the fruit up from Sam's palm and dipping his head down for Sam to slip the headstall over his ears. Sam buckled the throatlatch and fended off Toto's over-enthusiastic head-butt. No bit – Skye and Jenniver at the Mustang Ranch didn't use them. Probably a good thing, as some of the horses were starting to prefer meat over grass, as the changes the Cataclysm had worked became more evident and their flat, grazer's teeth were morphing into the more pointed ones of the predator.  
  
 _We're none of us like we used to be,_ Sam thought. Toto stayed where he was, ground-tied by the reins that touched the dead grass, and Sam whistled again, laughing as Seven came prancing around the corner of the shelter, head up, tail flagged, a long tree branch in his teeth.  
  
"Seven! Drop it!" Dean appeared around the same corner, wood heaped in his arms and his face red – leaves caught in his hair. "Like a damn dog."  
  
"He's just helping," Sam said, grinning. Knowing for a fact that Dean had taught his horse that particular trick. _Okay, so, imagine you're hurt, it's cold, you need a fire. Your_ horse _gets wood for you! How cool would that be?_  
  
Seven dropped the stick when Sam held out the second lump of dried apple and stood chewing it while Sam brushed bits of bark off his muzzle and got his gear on him. Dean did a last check of the salt lines in the shelter and dropped the iron bar across the door, effectively sealing it to any beastie that lurked thereabouts.  
  
"We good to go?" Dean asked.  
  
"We're good." Sam reached up and plucked the leaves from Dean's hair, straightened the knot of silk-wool scarf under his chin.  
  
"Stop that," Dean said, batting at Sam's hands. But he'd waited until Sam was done, little smile curling in the corner of his mouth.  
  
"Can't let you meet anybody looking like you just got dragged through a leaf pile." Sam turned to mount up, wincing as his bad leg throbbed, and Dean's gloved hand landed on his shoulder, lightly.  
  
"You need a leg up?"  
  
"I'm all right," Sam said, but Dean hovered all the same and Sam wasn't surprised when he felt a strong hand on his ass, giving him a boost. "Perv."  
  
"Gotta get my kicks where I can," Dean grinned. He swung up onto Seven with easy grace, gathering the reins and settling the skirts of his coat and for a moment Sam was frozen, remembering. Remembering Dean behind the wheel of the Impala, his face flushed by the wind, grinning – singing along to one of his damn cassette tapes, the Devil's own glee in the looks he'd shoot at Sam. All the surging power of two tons of Detroit steel spun and held by Dean's hands. The same hands that would stroke over the seamless gloss of her black skin, murmuring praise and endearments. It hurt, to think he would never see that again – Dean so free and easy, all the roads of America at his feet and under her wheels. Dean had never once had a black horse.  
  
Actually, the closest he'd ever come was Seven, a liver chestnut with a funny, nearly-black blanket over his dark chocolate rump and back. Dean tugged a piece of bramble out of Seven's flaxen mane and smoothed the coarse hairs down – pressed his heels into Seven's sides and the horse started moving, walk to trot to lope in a few strides, Dean fluid as water on his back.  
  
Dean never talked about his car anymore.  
  
Dean looked back over his shoulder as Toto moved up behind, always catching up to Seven's jumpy energy. "C'mon, Sammy – we'll hit Hayden by sunset. Get us a big fish dinner."  
  
  
  
Hayden was one of the stops along the Yampa River, water route that some few took, trading and fishing. Hayden, seen from the top of a rain-runneled hill, was a collection of buildings made of scavenged lumber and stone, all centered around a market square and dock. It was also on fire. Or had been, just lately. Smoke still eddied up from it, grey and thin, and the wind carried the sour stink of ashes to the brothers, making the horses snort and side-step, unhappy. Dean gritted his teeth and swallowed as a mass of feathers – five or six buzzards – flapped and hopped over the dull red-black remains of bodies.  
  
"How many?" Sam asked, and Dean closed his eyes for one long moment.  
  
"There were the Haydens – 'bout twelve of 'em, last time we came through here. And the Docks, eight or so of them...couple of Smiths and...." Dean's gaze ran over the listing, burnt-out husks that were floating around the long, L-shaped dock. "Looks like maybe three poleboats, crew of five or so each so...."  
  
"More than thirty. Maybe forty. Fuck." Sam's voice was flat – weary – and Dean sighed and unhooked his canteen and took a long drink. Then he hung it away again and dug a bandana out of his coat and tied it around his neck, ready to be pulled up over his nose and mouth.  
  
"C'mon, Sam. We gotta be sure...."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
Dean's rifle slid easily from its scabbard to his hands, and he felt in his pocket to be sure of extra rounds while Sam got his own bandana out, and toed Toto into a slow walk down the rock-littered slope.  
  
It was as bad up close as it had looked from the hill. Worse, actually, because Hayden lay in a small hollow and the motionless air in the settlement was thick with the sweet-sick stench of carrion. The morning's dusting of snow hadn't survived the sun or the lingering warmth of the ashes. They didn't bother with graves – they simply kicked open the half-burnt store room on the side of the smithy and dragged out a couple of barrels of salt and a tin of kerosene. Then it was a matter of finding each corpse and dousing it, and setting it alight. Some were very small. Most showed wolf-sign, splintered bones and blurred footprints. The buzzards and a band of opportunistic crows fled hissing from the small bonfires, flapping dustily away into the long slant of the late afternoon sun.  
  
Dean stood over the last corpse, wearily shoving the box of matches back into his pocket, fingers gritty with soot and dust. The sun was nearly down, now; sitting on the horizon like a coin of bloody bronze, veiled behind a thin scrim of cloud and ash. Sam was poking desultorily through the remains of a house, lifting bits of this and that – letting them fall. Dean sighed and headed toward him, scrubbing his fingers against each other.  
  
"Find anything?"  
  
"Maybe. Look here." Sam crouched, pointing, and Dean came closer, wishing somewhere down in the back of his mind for a flashlight. Big old Maglight, solid and brilliant in his hand. Sam pointed to what Dean realized was the remains of the ceiling of the house. He could see paint, blistered and flaking away, and nails. A devil's trap. Something had scored across it, breaking the ward – destroying its power. Something huge and strong, to gouge so deeply into the solid oak. "Look familiar?" Sam asked, glancing over at him, and Dean frowned.  
  
"Looks like the wood was split. Like...cracking a branch across your knee."  
  
"Yeah. Like something just took the whole house and gave it a good, hard wrench." Sam stood up, grimacing, and brushed his hands together, looking out across the smoldering town. The bandana made his eyes secretive somehow – unfamiliar. "I think whatever demon-sign Lena saw...it came through here."  
  
"I think you're right," Dean said. He reached out and touched the shattered wood – pushed a finger through the clutter of charred debris under it, remembering Uncle Bobby's house...remembering Meg splitting the ceiling and Bobby's trap with a roar, freeing herself.  
  
A whitish clump of some half-burnt stuff came free of the debris and fell open at his boot, flaking ash, and Dean gingerly picked it up. A book – or what was left of one. A rusty-red stain had bled over it, and most of it was curled and black, a husk. A few lines, though, were still clear, and Dean read them, pure habit.  
  
 _"Easy is the descent to Hell. Black Dis gates stand open night and day."_ Further down, the last bit before the page crumbled into black flakes: _"Lavinia's threnody unraveled along the walls."_. Dean shuddered and dropped the book, standing with a little hiss for his stiff knees. "Let's get out of here before the sun's gone – camp upstream."  
  
"Those cottonwoods," Sam said, and Dean pulled his bandana down and whistled for the horses.  
  
"Yeah. Buried some iron there a while back. It'll do for tonight." Sam picked his way out of the wreckage of the house and Dean followed him, biting his lip every time Sam wobbled a little on his sore leg. "Jesus, Sam, you ever gonna be one hundred percent again?" he snapped finally, and Sam just stopped and turned around, fox's eyes staring at him over the fold of muddy-brown bandana.  
  
"Your guess is as good as mine, Dean. Want I should just go back home and rest up?"  
  
"Oh, fuck you." Dean pushed past him and stomped his feet on the hard-pack of what used to be the yard of the house, shoving his hands into his pockets and hunching his shoulders. Pissed off that he'd said anything, pissed off at Sam for...no good reason. He could hear the horses coming closer, a steady drumming on the dry earth, jingle and creak. Sam's hand touched his shoulder, squeezing through the canvas and leather of Dean's coat.  
  
"Nothing we could have done. They were dead two days ago, maybe more."  
  
"I know, Sam. Jesus, I just...." Dean tipped his head back and breathed in, cold air and smoke rasping in his lungs. The nauseating tang of burned bone. "Just tired, is all. Long day."  
  
"Yeah." Sam's hand squeezed one more time, warm, and then it dropped away as the horses trotted around a corner and Sam went to meet them.  
  
  
  
The cottonwoods were starkly black in the smoke-blue twilight, thick, twisted trunks that feathered out to a myriad of thin, leafless branches. They formed a rough circle, seven in all, with the Yampa twenty yards or so south. They stopped first to water the horses and fill their canteens, then wearily rode into the trees. There was a subtle line of mounded earth among the roots, and a cache of firewood in a crotch of the biggest tree – enough to cook up something, and keep them warm through the night. Two miles from Hayden and mercifully free of the stench.  
  
Sam swung down off Toto and just leaned there for a moment, blinking. Lifting his head with a tiny jerk when Dean shouldered roughly into him.  
  
"I'll get the horses, you get the fire going. Cook me up some biscuits, hear?"  
  
"I'm not your bitch," Sam said, automatic, but he moved away from Toto and toward the wood cache. While Sam was leaning over the fire pit, blowing on the tinder, Dean dropped the saddlebags beside him with a jingle and stomped off. By the time the medium to large sticks were burning and Sam was mixing biscuit dough in the bowl, Dean was doling out grain and a bit of dried apple, murmuring to the horses and making sure Seven didn't try to snitch any grain from Toto.  
  
Sam oiled the cast-iron skillet and arranged the balls of biscuit dough in it, and then wiped his fingers on a rag. He poured water from his canteen into the pot and settled two bigger logs just so, so the skillet and pot could sit and heat. He dusted his fingers off and unearthed the persimmon and fox-grape preserve for the biscuit, and the greasy fold of brown paper that held the bacon.  
  
"Cut me a couple switches, Dean," he called.  
  
"Yeah, hang on." Dean was sifting fine, white salt through his fingers, marking the cardinal points of the cottonwood circle. Small sigils all drawn deosil, or sun-wise. When he finished the one in the north, he went to cut the switches and Sam carefully wedged the skillet into position, feeding a few more branches into the fire.  
  
"Here." Dean dropped two slender, peeled branches down beside Sam, their points already sharpened, and Sam threaded chunks of bacon onto them while Dean put a handful of ground chicory into the pot and settled with a thump to the dry earth. "Ready to go."  
  
"I saw." Sam handed the switches to Dean and pushed himself to his feet. He took a long breath and then walked to the eastern sigil. There was a small knife in his inner pocket and he drew it and pricked the heel of his hand – shook one drop of blood onto the sigil. It smoked ever so slightly, and the sigil took on a pale, smoky glow. The glow eddied and tumbled, following Sam as he walked the circle, a drop of blood at each point. At the northern sigil, something hissed out in the darkness and Sam jerked, making the shallow slice in his hand deeper – longer. " _Fuck_!"  
  
"You okay?" Dean asked, propping the kebobs of bacon just so, intent and serious.  
  
"I'm good." Sam squinted out into the darkness, searching, and frowned when he saw two points of red staring back at him. " _Damnit_ , Slink."  
  
"Didn't mean it, Sam. To hurt you." Slink crept closer, clawed hands curling around the trunk of a cottonwood, mouth a little open. Scenting the air – tasting it – and Sam shuddered.  
  
"What happened at Hayden?"  
  
Slink shrugged, inching closer, tip of his white tongue coming out to touch his lips. "You saw. Fire and darkness. Storm, Ssam."  
  
"Slink." Sam hesitated, on the verge of stepping across the sigil and taking Slink by the arm. The creature shifted a little, clawed fingers digging shallow gouges in the tree trunk, looking up at Sam with a hungry, greedy look on his narrow face. "What...was it?"  
  
"Something old," Slink said, and sprang. And slammed into nothing, flare of smoke-white as Sam snapped his hand downward and blood hit the sigil. "Aaah! Not fair, not fair!" Slink rolled, curled in on himself, keening, and Sam jerked again, hard, when Dean's hand closed on his shoulder.  
  
"What the fuck, Sam?"  
  
"Thought he might know something. About Hayden."  
  
"He could tell you from the other side of the damn wards! Fucking hell." Dean's hand gripped _hard_ , giving Sam a little shake, and then he stomped back to the fire. Sam lifted his hand and put his mouth on the cut, licking the blood away. Slink hissed, crouched and shuddering at the margin of light from the fire, baring his black-ice teeth, tail lashing like an angry cat's.  
  
"Drank their fear, drank their blood, drank their screams. Like old times, Sam. Like old times."  
  
" _Christo_ ", Sam said, and Slink jerked back, vanishing. Sam wiped the knife on the side of his boot and slid it away – turned around and joined Dean at the fire.  
  
  
  
  
  
They were met by three of Mama Lena's kids about five miles out, late in the afternoon of the next day. The kids emerged from a cluster of pine, riding pintos and wearing patchwork leather gear, everything trimmed in fur. They looked like some weird mutation of Vikings and Plains Indian, with feathers in their hair and two kids with long, metal-tipped spears. Dean recognized the oldest one, a girl who called herself Tink. She had strange little crumpled wings growing out of her shoulder blades and always cut her clothes so they could hang freely, twitching in response to her moods. She was the _de facto_ leader of the more militant kids, calling them Rangers and devising training and patrols for them – hanging on Dean's every word when she could persuade him to talk tactics and fighting.  
  
" _Ho-ooh_ ," Tink called, spear lifted, and Dean and Sam both lifted their own weapons, rifle and shotgun, in reply. The three circled, restless, while Toto and Seven picked their way down-slope, avoiding the heaved-up remnants of the highway that used to run there, and what was probably the remains of four or five SUVs, now rusted down to boulder-like lumps of corrosion and cracked plastic, starred with lichen.  
  
"Tink," Dean said, when they were close enough, and she raised her spear again in a solemn salute, her black and white mare blowing down her nose and giving Seven and Toto a look with a little too much white around the eyes.  
  
"Sir. There been something up on the ridge since we been here," she said, lifting her chin northward, and Dean let his gaze run along the ridge crest, black tips of pines and dark rock.  
  
"When did you see it last?"  
  
"Half hour? I sent the twins back, to tell."  
  
"All right. Let's get a move on, then. We want to be behind walls by sunset." Dean looked over at Sam, who was making a slow survey of the land around them, his gaze a little abstracted – focused elsewhere. "Anything?"  
  
Sam sighed and reached up to rub at his temple. "Not much more than the usual. There's _something_ , but...it's slippery."  
  
"Perfect. Double-time, everybody."  
  
The horses swung into a lope, Seven doing his damndest to lead the herd, jerking his head and kicking when Dean wouldn't let him. The cluster of horses fanned out a little, Tink in the lead, the two boys behind and out, riding in a triangle formation. Dean got Seven to move in closer to Toto and watched Sam sway easily in the saddle, more focused on what was going on around them than on what he was doing, his body effortlessly moving to the rhythm of the horse.  
  
Three miles on and the sun was just touching the tops of the pines, casting long, inky shadows across the russet grass, picking out every detail of pocked boulders and dried seedpods. The sky was tawny-red, long streaks of ocher cloud with the sun glowing a thick brick red behind them. The very air seemed to be steeped in amber and rust, and a sudden, frigid breeze sprang up out the west, rattling the dead weeds.  
  
"Dean –" Sam said, his voice low and thick and _urgent_ , and then Dean felt it too, a sort of thrumming in the air. A shaking, as if something huge and heavy were pounding the earth, sending invisible shockwaves out and out.  
  
"Fuck, we need –"  
  
"Sir!" Tink said, hissing-low, and Dean's gaze snapped up, following the line of her spear. Tracing the ridge that was north of them, leftward, all dark bits of rock and the bristly tops of pines and...something that was decidedly neither. It was moving sinuous and slick as a snake and Dean felt his mouth go dry.  
  
"We need to go," Sam said, and his voice was so weirdly calm that Dean gaped over at him for a moment. There was nothing calm about the look on Sam's face.  
  
"Yeah. Kids – go. _Now_. Don't look back. _Go_!" The kids clapped heels to sides and the pintos all but leapt into motion, running flat out, clatter and crunch on the gravely track. Seven lifted his forelegs up off the ground, halfway to rearing, eyes wild, and Dean curbed him around in a circle, still staring at the thing that was sliding leisurely down the ridge.  
  
Smoke – black and thick and _alive_.  
  
"Dean –"  
  
"Yeah. Fuckin' ay, let's go."  
  
The air seemed to thicken around them, cold and heavy. The dead grass whispered and snapped under the pounding hooves, and Dean crouched down low over Seven's neck and just let him go. He could feel Sam right there – could feel the thing behind them, a noise in their bones that was too low or too high to hear otherwise, throbbing and sick-making.  
  
Seven squealed, a pissed-off sound, and Sam was chanting something, Latin and Angelic cant, a ward that sent prickles down Dean's spine. He added his own voice, pushing the words out against the wind that battered his face, tasting Seven's mane on his lips.  
  
The sense of something _comingcomingcoming_ eased abruptly and Dean looked back, blinking wind-tears out of his eyes, squinting in the blood-colored air. "I think it's gone," he shouted, and Sam closed his eyes for a moment, fists tight in Toto's mane, the reins knotted in his fingers.  
  
"Maybe. Just – keep going."  
  
"Not stopping!" Dean squeezed Seven between his calves, _ha, ha, ha_ coming out in breathless bursts. Seven swiveled one ear back to listen and seemed to leap forward, going even faster. Curling around trees and leaping small wash-outs, steady and sure. The remains of Steamboat Springs came slowly into view and eventually Dean sat up, easing his death-grip on Seven, _ha_ changing to a drawn out _ho, ho, hooo, now_ , telling the horse it was time to slow down.  
  
Mama and her kids kept the roadway clear, but it also dog-legged and twisted, deliberately set up to be easily blockaded, no straight shot to her door. The skeletons of buildings arched over them, blackened by fire and time, softened by years of rain and wind. Sam was rubbing absently at his thigh, his gaze going from here to there to there and around again, as restless as Dean's. Dean felt when they were inside the wards, a palpable brush of something invisible all over him, there and gone. Under him, Seven snorted and dropped to a walk, nostrils distended and sides heaving. Dean patted Seven's sweaty neck and rolled his shoulders, shedding the nerve-jangling tension the demon had instilled in them all.  
  
"Forgot how fucked up those things make me feel," he said, and Sam made a little sound of agreement.  
  
"I don't think it followed us in here. I don't think it could."  
  
"Didn't think anything could get into Hayden, either."  
  
"I think...." Sam eased himself a little sideways in the saddle, taking some of the pressure off his leg, and Toto shook his head hard, blowing down his nose in disapproval. "I think that was just a...scout. They hit Hayden with everything they had."  
  
"Scout. Bet we know what it was looking for."  
  
"Bet we do," Sam replied, his mouth set in a grim line as they came around the last dog-leg of heaped rubble. A tall gate, covered over with sigils, runes, wards and bits of shaped iron blocked the way, two hurricane lanterns hanging from the arch at the top. Tink and her crew were waiting on the other side.  
  
  
  
Mama Lena had started life some forty-odd years earlier as Jacob, third son of a third son, and she'd walked all the way from the Dust Bowl to Steamboat Springs, a big old hound dog pulling a cart at her side, and the beginnings of her library on her back. Now, she stood in the middle of the orphanage kitchen, wearing canvas pants and furry boots and a big, blue sweater with little chunky flowers knitted into the design. She had a bandana around her head and a dour expression on her round, dark-skinned face.  
  
"I never thought I'd see the day," she said, herding Sam and Dean through the kitchen, past two huge wood-burning stoves, toward her office. Five or six kids were bustling around, serving up bowls of soup and laying out trays of bread and goat cheese – bowls of dried-apple sauce and mugs of spring water. "I learned the signs, same as everybody – same as I taught these children." Lena stopped to inspect a skinny boy's hands, turning them over – pushing back his long hair to look behind his ears. "But I never thought I'd see the day. I almost thought I was just dreamin' things. Mmh, mmh." She sent the boy table-ward with a little pat, shaking her head.  
  
"It's a good thing you sent word," Dean said. He reached out and plucked a roll from a passing bread basket, breaking it in half and inhaling the fragrant steam. Ignoring Sam's little huff of exasperation, as usual. "You saw true."  
  
"I expect I'd still be thinking it was a dream if Cinder and Snow hadn't had their spells," Lena said. All the orphanage kids were crowding into benches down the sides of the three long tables set up in the kitchen, watching Sam and Dean with big eyes, uncharacteristically quiet, and Sam didn't blame them. They'd all come in looking like the Devil was on their tails, and it had taken a half hour or more to cool the horses down – walk them calm and dry.  
  
"Now – quiet!" Lena called. She bowed her head, gnarled fingers clasped together, and the children did likewise. Sam did, as well, to be polite. Dean just shoved a chunk of roll into his mouth, making a little hum of pleasure. Lena shot him a look from under her eyelashes and Dean stopped chewing.  
  
"We give thanks for this food, for this home, for our friends. We give thanks for clean water and for purifying salt; we give thanks for the holy words that keep us safe. And mostly we give thanks for the boys that fought the Devil and lived to tell the tale. Ay-men."  
  
" _Ay-men_ ," the kids chorused, and Dean snorted softly.  
  
"Eat up, now," Lena said, and immediately a dozen conversations broke out as bread, butter, and rose-hip preserves were passed, soup was slurped and cheese sliced. Lena flapped her hands at them and they finished their walk to the little room at the back of the kitchen. It was possible it had once been a pantry or a storage room – it was windowless and cramped, but big enough for the three of them.  
  
Lena let herself down into her patched, overstuffed chair with a little groan and Sam followed suit, easing himself carefully down onto a thing of hide and carved wood. Dean just leaned a hip against Lena's cluttered desk, unbuttoning his coat and shoving the last of the roll into his mouth.  
  
"What did you see out there, then?" Lena asked, eyes on Sam.  
  
"A demon."  
  
"Just the one?"  
  
"Just the one. It followed us but...."  
  
Sam hesitated, and Lena leaned forward, frowning. "But what?"  
  
"But that's _all_ it did. It didn't...attack or anything. And it wasn't in a host." Sam glanced up at Dean and shook his head, rubbing distractedly at his leg. "It was...weird."  
  
"It is unholy and a blight upon the land," Lena said, and made a motion of fingers and hand, ward against evil. "How do we kill it?"  
  
Dean barked out a laugh, grinning. "My kinda gal, Lena. Right to the point."  
  
"I don't see no need of dancing 'round this thing. It's a demon, and die it must."  
  
"Yeah, it must." Dean rubbed his hands together, shedding a few crumbs. "We need to trap it – get it into a devil's trap. Then Sam and I do the rest."  
  
"So you can kill it? I never heard of one dying 'less it was inside a body. This gonna work? Because I got...there's this thing...." Lena stopped, and Dean shot Sam a look, lifting one shoulder in a shrug.  
  
"What do you mean, Lena?" Sam said softly.  
  
Lena just stared at him for a long moment, then she reached up and swept the bandana off her head. Her salt-and-pepper hair was done up in little inch-long twists all over her head, and she slowly rubbed her hand back and forth over them for a moment. "Would it be better if it were in a body?" she said finally. Slowly. Not looking at them at all. "If it were in possession?"  
  
Sam felt a little shiver go over him. Lena shoved the bandana into her pocket and looked up at him. Her dark eyes were curiously blank.  
  
"We got a man in the oubliette. Caught him stealin' goats. We could use him, like bait, if must needs. He ain't any of our own."  
  
Sam swallowed hard, sick feeling in his gut, and Dean shifted off the desk with a jerk, walking two fast paces to the opposite wall and staring blindly at the shelf of ratty paperbacks that lined it. "No, we...we don't need to do that."  
  
Lena nodded once, sharply, and stood up. "Come give a listen to what Snow and Cinder have to say. Maybe there's somethin' you need to hear. Then you can sit down to some supper."  
  
"Yeah – sure," Sam said, pushing himself up out of the chair, following Dean and Lena out of the office and into the warren of the orphanage proper. He'd never felt less like eating in his life.  
  
  
  
"And then there was these black smokes going 'round and 'round, like tornadoes. And this awful noise."  
  
"And then there was this light so bright it hurt to see and a noise...like metal grinding, somethin' awful."  
  
Cinder and Snow stood twisting nervously, not quite daring to look Dean and Sam in the eyes. It was impossible to tell the sex of them, they were both rail thin, with hair cropped up short and spiky over narrow, pointed faces. Cinder's hair was a dull crow-black, skin a sort of pale blue-grey, while Snow was as white as, well...snow. Twins, whose only matching features were their wide mouths and pale, epicanthic eyes. Mama Lena had a lot of twins. Most people thought they were unlucky.  
  
"So there was smoke and a light. Anything else?" Dean asked, and Snow shoved an elbow into Cinder's ribs.  
  
"You was there. Both you sirs. You was bloody."  
  
"Bloody?"  
  
"An' there was this...this thing."  
  
Snow finally looked directly into Dean's gaze, and Dean _felt_ it, little sizzle over every nerve, less than a second. "It weren't none of our'n. It weren't...livin' or...livin' right, I reckon." Snow blinked, licked at dry lips. "I was a'skeered of it."  
  
"Well, hell," Dean muttered. He looked over at Sam, who sighed. "Guess this isn't gonna be easy."  
  
"Guess not." Sam made a note in the little hide-bound book he'd dragged out of an inner pocket and looked back up at the twins. "Okay, let me just make sure –"  
  
He was interrupted by a pounding of feet down the corridor and then the door was shoved open so hard it hit the wall, rebounding and nearly hitting Tink in the face. She was wild-eyed and panting and she opened her mouth to speak but a sudden, wild hooting interrupted her, muffled by the walls but still loud – unnerving. Cinder and Snow both jerked and then turned and _ran_ , and Mama Lena jumped to her feet, pushing past Dean.  
  
"Lena, what -?"  
  
"Fire, damn it all, that's fire, boys! We got to move."

 

 

It seemed about half of Steamboat Springs was on fire. Or, what was left of it. The outer portions of the city had been scavenged for years by Mama and her orphans – by anyone who cared to take the time and effort to extract wood and stone and metal from the ruins. Now it was a shifting, sighing roil of smoke and flame, seething and creeping in a half ring around the orphanage and the Pony Express stables. The air was already thick with smoke and soot, sharp tang that made Sam's throat itch. The sky was blotted by clouds still, ragged masses of them whose underbellies were lit by the sullen, hellish glow of the fire. It made the air inside the orphanage walls seem to glow, ruddy and unnatural.  
  
The children were running all over, carrying buckets and heaps of old sacks – working the pump by the stables to fill the troughs. The valves on the rain-catch tubs on the roof were being opened and water was pouring down, sloshed all over the roof by mops and rags, running down the walls. Holy water, because Dean had gone up and blessed it while Sam was picking the kids who could read the best.  
  
Lena panted up to where Sam was standing, writing down the fourth copy of an exorcism in phonetic Latin, working fast by lantern-light. "Lena –" Sam said, and she lifted up her hand, stopping him.  
  
"I know, I know. I been slackin', I know. I ain't never seen a demon in my life and you know it. Tink knows how, and Oliver, and Sassy –"  
  
"It's not enough. _Everyone_ should know." Sam finished a line and sanded the ink – handed the paper off to a waiting boy, a skinny thing with long blond braids and huge eyes. He took it, spun on his heel and ran. They all had their places in the bucket chains – on fire-watch and wall-watch. Sam started writing again, deliberate.  
  
"I know they should," Lena said, and then she made a little sighing sound, worry and fear. "Ahh, there they go."  
  
Sam looked up from his impromptu desk – three stacked wooden crates – to see Dean slapping the rumps of a pair of pinto ponies, sending them trotting past. Riding them were Tink's twins; rangy, very black boys with feathers in their puffs of wiry hair. They were heading toward the springs – the back wall of the orphanage enclosure – and Sam frowned.  
  
"Where in hell are they going?"  
  
"They's a rainmaker at Muddy Creek, up the line half a day." Lena watched Dean walk toward them, wiping his hands on a rag. "It's been a dry season, Sam – this fire knows that. We need all the help we can get."  
  
"Gave them some anti-possession protection," Dean said, stopping by the desk. Sam could see streaks of pale paint on his fingers. "That fire-break of yours good, Lena?"  
  
"Had a crew down in it last month, got it all clean and tight." Lena looked around at the ordered chaos of the courtyard, at close to fifty orphans bracing for a fight. "We sent the livestock down to the spring cave, and the babies with 'em. Got about six of the oldest to watch 'em, and a couple of Tink's Rangers."  
  
"That's good. Sam?"  
  
"Almost done," Sam said. He wrote the last line – fifth exorcism in as many minutes – and passed it off to the last kid waiting, tiny little girl with fused fingers on both hands and sharp, angled blades of bone standing up off her spine like fins. She scurried away, mouthing the words silently, and Sam capped the inkwell. "I think we should –"  
  
"Mama! Sirs! Somebody comin'!" Tink shouted down from the wall and Sam and Dean moved fast, coats flaring around their knees as they trotted across the courtyard to the wall. Lena stayed behind, two stiff knees keeping her grounded.  
  
An iron staircase – old fire escape, it looked like – had been pried off its original building and fastened to the wall, and Sam and Dean's boots rang on the rusting treads as they climbed upward. The wall was about fifteen feet high, at most; irregular and imperfect but strengthened by layers of salt-thickened paint and regular baths of holy water. Too, there were cold-forged iron wards nailed up at intervals, and a boundary of iron buried inside and out.  
  
The top of the wall was circled by a walk, low enough to keep most covered but of course Sam and Dean both had to crouch a bit to avoid giving whoever was outside a clear head-shot.  
  
"Tink?"  
  
"I saw someone, sir. Moving fast. Couldn't tell...I mean...it's dark, sir."  
  
"Show me," Dean said, and Tink led him to a look-out, protected by a criss-cross of iron bands.  
  
"Two o'clock," Tink said, gesturing, and Dean looked out, scanning the rubble and ruins that lay there.  
  
"Ah, hell." Dean turned away from the look-out, his expression one of irritation and Sam pushed past him to look out himself.  
  
"Damnit." Sam let his forehead hit the iron bands, pushing into them for a moment, eyes shut in sheer frustration. Then he turned around, sharing a sour look with Dean. "It's Slink."  
  
  
  
"What the hell is he doing?" Dean muttered, watching as Slink advanced and retreated, looking over his shoulder and then up at the walls, indecision in every line of him, his tail whipping and curling.  
  
"Maybe he knows how the fire started."  
  
"Maybe _he_ started it," Dean said, and Sam shrugged. Slink wasn't much for the grand gesture. Was, in fact, prone to spending a lot of his time simply elsewhere, unhappy when he couldn't follow Sam because of wards and salt, uneasy around Dean, which Dean was more than happy to encourage. The storms that came every six or eight weeks seemed to agitate him, but he always slunk away in the end, going back to whatever hidey he had.  
  
Now, Slink climbed a tilting heap of rubble, claws catching in the litter of weeds and sapling trees that had sprung up in it. Climbing until he was at the top of the eroded tip and then he crouched there, staring at the wall.  
  
"Sssaaaam! Sssaaam!"  
  
"Great." Dean was up and moving, along the cat walk and down the stairs, Sam trailing behind him, clumsy on his sore leg.  
  
"Dean – hey! Dean, slow down."  
  
"What, Sam? That fucking idiot is gonna draw everything in a five-mile radius to him, _including_ however many damn demons are out there. We need to shut him up." Dean pounded down the last set of stairs and hit dirt, using the rail to swing himself around, heading for the gate. Until Sam launched himself over the railing like an idiot, landing hard in front of Dean. His leg crumpled and Dean grabbed his arms, shoving him against the ironwork and bracing him there. "What the fuck are you doing? Jesus –"  
  
"What, exactly, are you gonna do with him, Dean?" Sam's voice was tight with pain – a little breathless. "Can't chase him off – he'll just come back. Can't bring him in _here_. What are you going to do?"  
  
"I'm gonna – I'll.... Well, fuck, I don't _know_ , okay? But he can't sit out there yelling for you like some half-assed Romeo."  
  
" _Ssssaaaam_!"  
  
"Christ," Dean said, and rubbed his hand over his face. Sam leaned against the stair rail and kneaded his thigh, looking pale in the murk of smoke and fire light that suffused the courtyard. Six months ago his thigh had been hamburger – flesh and bone pulverized to a sick, shattered mess. He'd healed, and healed well, but not _enough_ , insisting they ride the Rim like always – insisting he was fine sitting Toto for seven, eight hours a day when Dean knew he was no such thing.  
  
"Listen. You know he won't hurt me –" Sam said, and Dean's gaze snapped up from Sam's hands to his face, furious.  
  
" _Won't_ , not can't. And 'won't' only until you really piss him off. You know he's not safe, Sam. Not for one second is he safe."  
  
"I know he's not. But he can't get to me, Dean. You know that, too. The most he could do is catch me with those claws. Anything else – he's helpless."  
  
Dean threw his hands up, frustrated – this close to throwing a punch. "We don't fucking _know_ anything, Sam! We assume and we – we hope but we don't _know_ –"  
  
"Ssssaaam, please, please Ssam!"  
  
" _Shut! Up!_ " Dean bellowed, loud enough to hurt his throat and they all heard the little cat-squeak of surprise from Slink. "Sam –"  
  
"Dean, we gotta get him out of here." Sam pushed away from the rail and stood straight, gingerly testing his leg. He winced, lines of pain grooved beside his mouth, but then he drew himself up – in. Hiding everything. "Get up on the wall with Tink. She's got some archers in her Rangers, get them up there, too; arrows dipped in holy water, some tubs of salt. I'll go out –"  
  
" _No_ , Sam," Dean said, and Sam put his hands on Dean's shoulders, squeezing through the leather and canvas of Dean's coat. Serious, always so fucking serious.  
  
"I'll go out there, just on the other side of the gate. Make him come to _me_ , okay? See what he wants; see if I can get him out of here. Okay?" Sam rubbed his fingers over Dean's shoulders, pulling him a little closer – catching Dean's gaze and holding it. "It's the only way, Dean."  
  
Dean stared back at Sam, a muscle in his jaw ticking, his hands balled into fists at his side. Fury and terror and frustration roiling inside him. Knowing he was right, but that Sam was right, too. They had to get Slink out of there, and they had to do it _now_. Dean opened his mouth, ready to muster one more argument – or to simply say no, again. And Sam just smiled at him, tiny little quirk of his mouth, one corner going up, his slanted eyes softening, little crinkles at the corner.  
  
And Dean felt it all just drain away because...well, hell. There was nothing else to be done. Dean let his head drop down – let out a ragged chuckle, his hands opening, coming up to grab onto Sam's forearms. "God damnit, Sam...okay." He looked up again, serious himself, now – resolved. "Okay."  
  
"Okay," Sam said.  
  
Dean huffed in frustration and then leaned forward and kissed Sam, hard, letting a little of his worry and fury bleed through. Then Dean was stepping away – yelling up to Tink, sending two of the kids on fire-watch running for water and salt. Sam wasn't going anywhere until everything was exactly how Dean wanted it.  
  
  
  
Sam stepped out of the little sally port they'd built into the gate, his shotgun in his hands. He could feel the wards shivering, touched somewhere down the length of the wall by things that shouldn't be touching them. Things razor-edged and not quite right and it was like nails on a chalkboard. Sam knew Dean could feel it too, maybe not quite as clearly, but it wasn't helping his mood any, and Sam turned to give him a last little nod before he stepped out from under the arch of the gate.  
  
Just a few steps. Still within the ward's influence, if not the actual boundaries of them. But Slink didn't know that, so it probably didn't matter.  
  
Slink was scrambling down the rubble-heap now, claws striking sparks from the twisted remains of stone and steel. He landed as graceful as a cat and crouched for a moment, just looking at Sam. Thirty or so feet away, his cotton-white hair nearly phosphorescent in the rufous murk.  
  
"Slink," Sam called, and the creature stood slowly. He hesitated, tail lashing, and then he walked forward. Or, more properly, slinked forward, head down and a little averted, haunches rolling. Seduction in the cant of his shoulders and the twist of his hips but Sam had been pretty much immune to Slink's particular wiles for a very long time.  
  
"Sssaam...."  
  
"You shouldn't be here, Slink."  
  
"You always push me away, Sam." Slink paused about fifteen feet away, sinking down onto his haunches and looking up at Sam through wisps of tangled hair. "You always tell me to go. I don't want to go, Sam. I want...." Slink's claws raked the dirt, digging furrows. "Want," he muttered, petulant pout to his cherubic mouth.  
  
"Did you start the fires?"  
  
Slink grinned, white tongue and glimmering teeth, quick and feral. "Like old times, Sam."  
  
" _Did_ you?" Sam shifted the shotgun in his hands, restless. He could _feel_ Dean behind him, disapproving glare and all, itching to reach out and yank him back inside. "Tell me, Slink. Tell me the truth."  
  
"Oh, the truth. What would you know about _that_ , Sssam? Sam-liar." Slink's voice sank lower – raspier. Furious. "Liar and _thief_ , liar and thief."  
  
Sam felt a little chill go over him, little knot of ice in his belly and he shoved it away. "I didn't take anything from you, Slink."  
  
" _Sam_ – get back in here," Dean said, low, furious rumble and Sam's shoulders twitched.  
  
"Damnit, Slink, you came here yelling for me, what do you want?"  
  
Slink tilted his head to one side, as if listening, and then he grinned again, his black eyes sparking red. "You, Sam. Always, always. You."  
  
There was a sudden, deafening _noise_ , like the air tearing – like the earth shattering – and fire slammed into the wall about fifty feet away, splintering it. There were shrieks – burned kids, kids sliding down in the rubble – and then another crackling roar, sonic boom of sound that rocked Sam on his feet. More fire, exploding out of nowhere and hitting the tinder of the wall. Flames and smoke billowed outward, dry rush, wood popping as it was consumed, and there were more screams.  
  
Slink leaped to his feet with a shout, head tipped back, arms outspread. The fire alarm was wailing again inside the orphanage and Sam could hear Lena shouting orders, panic tightly tamped down but spreading. Dean's voice, too, shouting instructions and Sam took a step back. Another _crack_ , seemingly right on top of Sam and he cried out, startled – deafened for a moment.  
  
The top of the gate blossomed into fire, the flames curling out, white-hot fingers and Sam ducked, stumbling away, seeing a bloodied leg hanging down near the look-out Tink had been at last. The gate itself seemed mostly intact, but burning timbers were already dropping down, cross hatching the sally port with lines of smoky fire. Sam could hear barely hear Dean's voice from inside, sharp and breathless with fear and fury.  
  
"Sam!"  
  
"I'm okay! I'm coming in!"  
  
"Staying _out_ ," Slink said, far, far too close and Sam spun – stumbled – went down, his leg finally giving out, feeling as if it were broken all over again. Slink was crouched two feet away, his claws sunk into the dirt and his tail whipping hard – his eyes predatory slits. He ducked his head, shoulders bunching as if to leap and Sam brought the shotgun up and fired in one smooth motion.  
  
Slink screeched and jolted backward, peppered with salt and blessed iron. He vanished into the smoke and darkness, wailing. Sam knelt there, panting, but Slink didn't reappear. He put the butt of the shotgun on the ground and began to slowly lever himself upright, wincing. He could hear shouts and the sizzling sounds of water hitting fire – could hear the gate groaning, being dragged open. As he gained his feet he looked up, sparks and bits of burning trash whirling overhead. And something else – something more.  
  
As the gate creaked wider, a dozen demons – their smoke-forms writhing and knotting, red-lit and awful in the fire light – swooped out of the air and swarmed around Sam, engulfed him. A high, sick buzzing filled his ears and his head, battering at him from the inside. Sam was buffeted and spun, flayed with their very essences, a burn like acid. He pulled the trigger on the shotgun again – felt it buck in his hands, but whatever damage it did was not enough – not nearly enough. The smoke – the demon bodies – whipped away for a heartbeat, no more, and then whirled inward again, a collapsing spiral.  
  
Out of the maelstrom, a hand suddenly knotted itself into the front of Sam's shirt and he was yanked forward – upward – out. The last thing he saw were eyes, rolling back white, and then nothing at all.  
  
  
  
"Sam, God damnit!" Sam's shotgun barked again and Dean kicked burning timbers aside – shoved the gate another half-inch and scraped through, splinters tearing the shirt across his chest, the back of his coat. Scraped hard enough to catch the skin on his sternum and Dean hissed and twisted and _shoved_ and was through, finally.  
  
And Sam wasn't there.  
  
Dean spent about ten seconds too long gaping at the place he _should_ be and then he was moving. Running. Going first to the finger of rubble that Slink had climbed, then along the wall, because Sam, damn him, would be trying to help people, would be in there getting his hands burnt trying to dig some kid out....  
  
Dean kicked at smoldering planks – nearly fell into the fire break, stumbling on the edge of the trench cut into the soil. "Sam, damnit, answer me!!" Dean _knew_ Sam wasn't there, he could feel it, but...he had to be _sure_ , had be one hundred percent sure and God, please, don't let him be _under_ the damn wall....  
  
"Not yours, not yours, _mine_ now," Slink said, fading in out of the smoke and glare of the fire and Dean reacted, pure instinct. Drew the Colt that he carried always, riding close to his skin – like Dad's journal, like the Horsemen's talismans. Drew and cocked and fired but Slink was already gone, flicking away between one second and the next.  
  
" _Sammy_!" Dean's voice was lost in the dry roar of the fire – in the chaos beyond the wall – in the empty devastation of the city. Sam was gone. " _Fuck_. Jesus. Okay, okay...."  
  
"Dean," someone said, a sibilant rustle, and Dean jerked around, the Colt coming up. Point blank on Malak, who was standing far too close, his arms wrapped tight around his ribs, his wings half shadow, the fire shining through them and on them, turning them to flame and smoke. "Dean –"  
  
"Christ, Malak. I don't have time for you right now." Dean skirted around him, striding back toward the gate. He needed Seven and Toto, needed supplies, needed –  
  
"They took him," Malak said, and Dean stopped dead.  
  
Stood there, his belly twisting up into a knot, his lungs hitching. "What did you say?"  
  
"Sam's gone. They took him."  
  
Dean spun on his heel and took three – four – fast steps, right up to Malak. Reaching out and taking his shoulder in a grip tight enough to leave bruises and ignoring the little flinch – the wide, startled eyes. " _Who_ took him? What the hell do you know about it? Tell me, damnit, or so help me –"  
  
"Dean, please –" Malak was shrinking away, his wings fluttering in agitation, his eyes welling and Dean shook him.  
  
" _Tell_ me."  
  
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it hurts, please –" Malak was crying now, tears streaking down his cheeks, mouth trembling and Dean shoved him away. Stood there glaring as Malak stumbled – fell against the wall and huddled there, shivering. "I didn't do it, I didn't take him."  
  
"Christ, I...." Dean took in a hard breath, tamping down the anger and the panic. Setting it aside. For now. "Tell me who did."  
  
Malak sniffed – straightened up and rubbed his shoulder. There were marks there already, bruises filling in in the shape of Dean's hand. Malak scrubbed the back of his hand across his eyes and for a moment he was a child. For a moment he was Sam, bruised knees and hurt feelings and Dean wanted to scream.  
  
"I saw them. I felt them coming and I followed them – I wanted to tell you but I...I was afraid. They're stronger than me...." Malak sniffed again, his cheeks smeared wet and his wings drooping, feathers dragging in the soot and dirt.  
  
"Yeah, okay. It's okay." Dean looked around him at the fires – the wall that was blasted and sagging, still burning. He could hear the orphans – Lena – working the bucket chain and digging out the wounded and he just.... Just wanted a moment of quiet. _Just one damn minute._ "Just – tell me, Malak."  
  
Malak nodded – pushed his tangled hair back off his face and sidled closer, hugging himself again. The fire reflected in his eyes, sheer gold for a moment, and Dean flinched. "It's...there's so much power, Dean. You have to be careful. He's old...he's so old...the air aches with his age. Hates him, it hates to touch him...." Malak shivered, his wings coming to wrap around him, rags of shadow and the white feathers smutted with soot – the black ones gone chalky, the starlings-wing gleam drowned in dust.  
  
Dean stared at him, his thoughts running rabbit-fast, rabbit-erratic. "Do you know who it is? Is it...a demon? An angel?"  
  
" _Old_ ," Malak said, his voice cracking. "He...I don't know, I – I was too scared. I just...had to find you. Had to protect you, Dean."  
  
"Doin' a bang-up job," Dean muttered. He sighed – shoved the Colt away and started walking again, fast. "I gotta find Sam, Malak. That's all that matters."  
  
"I know. I can help. Dean –" Malak was in front of him, flick of his there-and-gone-again wings, and Dean scowled and walked around him, avoiding the out-stretched hand. "Dean, I _can_ , I can feel him, I can find him. Please, I can help you."  
  
 _Fuck_. "Fine. You help me, then. You stay out here and wait for me, got it?"  
  
"No." Malak took the couple of steps that got him right up in Dean's face, way too fucking close and Dean edged backward a step, fingers twitching toward the Colt. "We can't wait. There's no time, Dean. No time." And then Malak reached out, snake-strike quick, and his fingers touched Dean's forehead, a gesture totally familiar and completely unexpected.  
  
Dean had time to think _Goddamnit_ and then everything was gone.  
  
  
  
  
  
 _The air was warm, rising off the earth in waves that He could feel, like a million tiny fingers or feathers, lifting Him. He could taste it, desert-dry and salt-iron, and it was like Before, it was like forever. Above, far above, He could feel the lazy, banking glide of the Other falter and stall.  
  
And then become an arrowing dive, a fall like a lightning-strike and He laughed aloud, stretched Himself on the air, unfurling and unfurling, a broad expanse of water far below that gleamed like ice – like stars. Making His own stoop, falcon of pure light, braced for the Other to catch Him. And He does, and they fall together, entwined, entangled – shatter the earth with a crack like first peal of thunder at the dawn of creation. Miles of stone split and churn, water boils into steam and the very air gouts away from them; recoiling, burning, turning the sky to blood and ash.  
  
Tearing them both asunder, matter and not-matter going to atoms – to particles – to nothing at all._  
  
  
  
Sam swam upward, slowly, through air that seemed thick as syrup. He was resting against something hard and cold and his wrists hurt, his head did, and there was something.... Something suffocating him. Something that seemed to weigh him down, making his heart beat so slow – making his lungs struggle to breathe.  
  
 _I don't want to set the world on fire  
I just want to start a flame in your heart._  
  
The singer's voice was cracked – hissing and popping with static and dust – and Sam finally forced his eyes open and looked around slowly, blinking. He was in the remains of a room. Adobe bricks, abraded by wind and time, formed rudimentary walls, and most of the roof was gone. The space was lit by a bank of candles, shadows rippling up the crumbling structure. What looked like the splintered remains of pews lay tangled in leggy bitterbrush and desert grasses, bluestem and millet and one Christmas cactus, splaying itself far and wide from the ruins of a basin – a font. _Church_ , Sam thought, and the rubbed-down walls slowly took on a more familiar shape.  
  
"Oh, hell no," Sam whispered, and winced. His throat was smoke-dry and burning and he swallowed painfully and struggled upright. His wrists were tied. His coat and sweater and long-sleeved undershirt were gone, and the air was meat-locker cold, fingertips and nose and ears already aching with it.  
  
 _In my heart I have but one desire  
And that one is you, no other will do._  
  
Sam sat hunched over for a moment, his head swimming – ears ringing – the scratchy tin-horn sounding music drowned in a staticky buzz. Then it cleared and Sam looked down at his wrists. Whatever was wrapped around them looked like.... Sam swallowed and looked sharply away, trying not to throw up. It looked like skin, strips of skin, still bloody. Seeping and curling at the edges, leaking runnels of watery blood down his forearms. Looped and knotted, reeking faintly of iron and salt and rot. God only knew where it had come from – what person lay dead because of it.  
  
" _God_."  
  
"Left the building," someone said, and Sam jerked, startled. Didn't have to look around because he could feel it; nerve-rasping hum, too deep for his ears, sawing at his bones. "Isn't that what you say? _'Left the building.'_ I think it rather...apt."  
  
Something stepped from the shadows near what had once been the altar. The thing was tall, lean – stretched, in a way, hands and feet and face longer than they should be, distorted. A facsimile of a man in a funhouse mirror, unclothed, it's skin a sort of pallid olive. It walked with a limping, liquid grace, as if gravity and uneven surfaces were a constant surprise and yet....  
  
It didn't fall, but _glided_ , twisting around the slumped rubble of the altar, thin fingers fluttering over what Sam realized was an old-fashioned Victrola, complete with corroded brass trumpet. The record on the turntable was warped, sending the tone arm and needle up and down on a lurching, roller-coaster path. It was all wrong – too warped to actually play – and Sam pushed at the heaviness in his mind, the numbing cold and an ache that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside.  
  
His lips formed words, Enochian wards, syllables of protection and power. The thing – demon – lifted a hand, two fingers cutting across the air and Sam felt as if a noose had been dropped around his neck. No air, just pressure and he gaped soundlessly, his chest heaving. Trying to draw in what it couldn't have.  
  
"We have business, SamuelWinchester. So there will be none of that." The demon looked away from him, watching the record revolve – the arm lurch up and down. "I remember this. Music...." Its head snapped around to where Sam was writhing, hands clawing clumsily at his throat. "The caterwauling of the damned. Now...shall we talk?" Sam nodded – tried to nod. Black sparks were swarming in the periphery of his vision and his heart seemed to catch-step-catch, erratic and labored and too slow, too slow. As the sparks coalesced and swirled inward, fuzzing the edges and turning the candle-flame dim, the demon lifted its hand.  
  
The pressure lifted abruptly and Sam whooped in a raw breath – immediately coughed it out again. He rolled onto his side, gagging for air – dragging it in and coughing it out until his ribs hurt. Gradually, his breathing steadied and he pushed himself slowly upright, arms shaking. His throat felt scraped open, iron-taste on the back of his tongue and he spat into the dust, seeing his spittle tinged with rust.  
  
"I forget how fragile you are." The demon spoke from inches away – directly behind Sam – and he jerked wildly, scrambling clumsily up onto one knee, scooting awkwardly away. The demon reached out and curled its hand around his ankle, yanking him back with one hard pull, fingers like a vise of fire, branding through canvas and leather and wool.  
  
"Let me _go_ ," Sam rasped, kicking, dumped on his back in the dust, and the demon cocked its head again, obviously puzzled. Amused, if such a thing could be. Sam could feel sand and grass sticking to his shoulders, skin slick with fear-sweat, belly clenching sickly. It was – pressure and vacuum and _noise_ , infrasonic roar that made Sam's bones ache. "Fuck –" It _hurt_ , to have the demon so close, and Sam twisted helplessly, the loops of flesh around his wrists dripping little spots of chilly fluid onto his chest.  
  
"This is tedious." The demon stood abruptly, holding its hand out. Smoke coiled in from the gaps in the broken roof. Animate smoke – demons without hosts. They curled around the demon's hands – around its body, rubbing and twisting like eager dogs, pooling around its feet. A peculiar sort of whining moan came from them, scraping across Sam's nerves. Something _else_ came out of the darkness then – Slink, creeping over the rubble of the altar and settling into a crouch midway between demon and Sam.  
  
"Told you...to come with me." Slink was streaked with blood, trails of glistening wet in the candle glow. He wiped at his shoulder and licked his palm, white tongue stained scarlet for a moment. "Told you. Didn't want to hurt you," Slink said, "But you hurt _me_ , and you wouldn't come, I didn't have a choice, Sam, Ssam –"  
  
"Be quiet, creature." The demon sent the smoke-forms away with a flick of its weirdly articulated hands and they swarmed upward, keening. Coiling restlessly up near the lone roof joist, lit with sickly purple-yellow flares. "What you've been reduced to – revolting." Slink ducked his head down, shoulders coming up. Looking between Sam and the demon, something like hurt on his too-pretty, feral face. "They will pay for it, however. Pay quite exquisitely." The demon grinned at Sam, too many teeth and a sudden, flickering, serpent's tongue and Sam shuddered.  
  
"Mine, he's mine," Slink muttered, but he darted away from the demon, head down. Not looking at Sam.  
  
"What do you want?" Sam got his legs under him – got himself to his knees and then – shakily – his feet. His thigh ached, sharp and insistent. The demon watched, mouth curled in a crooked smirk. "The war's over – you lost. Or did you forget that?"  
  
"I never fought in your war, SamuelWinchester." The demon flicked its hand out again and the Victrola, which had settled to a throbbing hum, the record over, suddenly started playing again. "I was down so very deep – pushed so very far away. It took me eternities to climb up to what Lucifiel made his Hell. And when I arrived – what did I find?"  
  
The demon glided a step closer to Sam and Sam steeled himself and didn't move. Working his wrists in the clammy twists of flayed skin, feeling it stretch, just as little.  
  
"Found out you missed the party?"  
  
"I found Hell _deserted_. Oh, there were a few, straggling hundreds, limping and lurking in the corners. But Hell was...empty. So empty...all my brothers, all my sisters...." The Victrola was playing faster than it was supposed to, and the music was music-box plinky, the singer's voice a shrill whine that grated in Sam's ears.  
  
 _Believe me – I don't want to set the world on fire.  
I just want to start  
A flame in your heart...._  
  
"It was empty because Lucifer killed them." Sam took a deep breath, centering himself. Drawing up power that he hadn't used in...years. "And we killed the rest." He let his eyes flutter shut, reaching – pushing. Trying to wrap his power around the demon in front of him and destroy it. Disperse it to nothing, _end_ this. He could feel the power, a tightly-coiled spring somewhere deep in his mind but...he couldn't free it. The pain in his head ticked upward, sickening, and he felt something hot and wet slip down over his lip. Blood. Sam opened his eyes, gasping. _Not gonna work, what is it, what is it...._  
  
The demon hissed, tongue flickering out again and Sam stepped back, one step. Staring as the dark, human eyes rolled back white. "You can't touch me, SamuelWinchester. I have gained...so much. Learned so much...." The demon shivered and its eyes darkened again, but not to plain human brown. To something poison-green and slitted, a reptile's unblinking gaze and Sam stepped back again, toward the altar, toward the possibility of something – anything – that could help. Stepped back and flinched and wobbled on his leg, gritting his teeth against the pain.  
  
"The Horsemen, they were there, in that empty Hell. Whining on and on about how little time they had to spend up here. How you killed them. Famine and his whimpering cry of _hungry_. Always hungry." The demon made a chewing motion with its mouth, showing too long, too sharp teeth. Fangs. "Eating my demon-dogs until I took that little trick from him." The demon advanced another step – another – and Sam felt the tumbled mess of the altar bump against his calves.  
  
"He tasted like rot and dust, but he fed me, yes. Fed me well. As they all did." The demon reached out suddenly, its long fingers curling around the back of Sam's neck and jerking him close. Fever-heat and the dizzying scent of blood – of a peculiar, dry spice that made Sam's nose burn. "And you'll feed me, too. You, your brother –" Sam jerked, trying to get away, but the demon held him tighter, long nails sinking into Sam's neck, sharp as knives.  
  
"Oh, yes, I know your brother will come. Tethered and tugged along in your wake like a kite, isn't he? On your string. You, your brother, and this one...."  
  
The demon jerked Sam around – into a stumbling walk up and over the altar. Behind it was a pit, the earth heaped up in damp-looking mounds and at the bottom of it – a figure. A body. Shrouded in white linen that had gone to tawny-rust under the earth but Sam knew, he knew....  
  
"Drink you down, break your seals, crack the world apart, and this time...this time...." The demon's mouth was on Sam's ear, lips just brushing the edge, hot breath making Sam shudder all over, sick and furious. The demon's other hand was on his belly, petting, and Sam wanted to throw up.  
  
"This time, no heavenly host to interfere. This time, just us...just me...." The snake's tongue flickered out, licking at Sam's cheek and he jerked away, a strangled noise of disgust rasping out of his throat, and the demon let him. Let him go – pushed him – and Sam slipped and skidded on the crumbling edge and fell, straight down.  
  
  
  
Dean thumped down, solid ground under foot and clear air all around, rapidly fading dizziness that he shook off with an impatient huff. " _Damnit_ , Malak, I needed to –"  
  
"No time, no time, no time, Dean!" Malak's hand was on Dean's arm, tugging – his wings were lifted high and fluttering, stirring little twists of dust up from the ground. They were at the edge of a clump of desiccated sweet acacia, the thin branches trembling in a light wind. All around was nothing but sand and dust, rippled by storms into dunes. Dry, bone-cracking cold, and Dean looked up at the night sky. Rags of clouds were spread thinly here and there, and the curved blade of the moon was rising to his left, rust-red. There was nothing else. Certainly no too-tall brother in need of help or otherwise.  
  
Dean shook Malak's hand off with a little growl. "Where the fuck are we?"  
  
"Where it all started, Dean, where it all ended. He's here, and Sam is here, and it's time, it's time...."  
  
"Time for what?" Dean asked. But he was distracted by sense of unease – by a slowly-forming recollection and recognition. Away down the alley of dunes and the occasional hump of dry shrubbery was what looked like walls. Walls toppled and eroded, walls that seemed to be lit from behind by some low, tawny light. Candles – fire. "Is this –?"  
  
"You know this place. You _know_." Malak hugged arms and wings around himself, his hair stringing into his eyes, his eyes wide and liquid-silver in the dim starlight. "First ground dedicated to Him. To any power, to any god. First blood spilled, last blood spilled. The storm, Dean."  
  
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Dean checked that the Colt was in his coat pocket – drew it and made sure of the rounds inside it, and then tucked it away again. He started to walk, silent in the dust. There were no sounds – not even insect noises. Nothing but a faint, crackling thump, like a ragged heartbeat. He aimed for the glow behind the walls, circling a little, using the dunes and the tilt of the land as cover for as long as he could.  
  
Malak walked beside him – flickered here and then there, his wings opening wide, stars and sand gleaming faintly through feathers like smoke. "He's strong, Dean, strong, I can't...I don't...."  
  
Dean turned and snagged Malak's wrist in a fast, hard grip – tugged him close. _Too close_ , he could hear in his head, Sam's voice and even his father's, warning him. _Never let your guard down._ "You brought me here, Malak, you better not fucking disappear on me, you hear? You stay with me."  
  
Malak shivered under Dean's glare, looking like he would bolt the second Dean let go. "I need to keep you safe, safe –"  
  
"That's right. So you better stick close." Dean let go – winced at the bruise that was already smudging Malak's skin, cuffing the thin wrist. "Fuck, I'm sorry. Just...don't leave, okay?"  
  
Malak put his wrist to his mouth, little dart of his pink tongue. "I won't. I'll stay."  
  
"Okay. Here we go." Dean drew the Colt and then eased around the last dune – picked his track by eye through the scattered Lego-blocks of tumbled adobe and stone. Yeah, he knew this place. Hadn't ever expected to come back to it, really, and now....  
  
Now here he was, and dollars to doughnuts Sam was in there, and fuck knew what else. Demons, yes, but something _else_. Something that was making Malak twitchy as a cat. Dean wasn't quite as in tune with – things – as Sam was, but he could still feel it. Something that seemed to press down all over – seemed to weigh the freezing air like lead, crushing all sound, making even his footsteps in the sand muffled and far away. Just that rubbing, thrumming _noise_ , whatever it was, that was starting to get on Dean's nerves. He took a long breath – glanced over at Malak one more time and then he was moving forward, following the path he'd picked out, settling his boots carefully so there would be no noise – nothing to give him away.  
  
Of course, it didn't do a damn bit of good. The second he passed the shoulder-high barrier of the first wall, he could feel whatever was in there turn its notice on him. The air seemed thick, too dense to breathe, and Dean dragged a freezing lungful in and stopped, staring. Scrub and rubble and...something. Not a person, because a person didn't look like that. All stretched and strange, warped by unseen pressures, twisted in all the wrong ways.  
  
"DeanWinchessster...." The thing said, and there was enough smug satisfaction in the words to make Dean's lip curl up in a snarl.  
  
"The one and only," Dean said. He lifted the Colt, like ice in his hand, and drew a bead. And fired, jump and spit of fire, puff of smoke. Bullet like a bead of mercury flashing through the air. Hitting the thing right between the eyes.  
  
  
  
Sam landed hard, his bound hands useless, his leg giving out as completely as it had earlier, at Mama Lena's. He rolled onto his side and lay still for a long moment, his eyes squeezed shut and his fists clenched, willing the knife-sharp pain to subside. The Victrola was still playing, but no music was coming out, just the static-thump of the tone arm going around and around, end of the record like a cracked heartbeat.  
  
After a few moments he stirred, grimacing as rocks and dirt were ground into his bare shoulder and arm. It seemed slightly warmer here at the bottom of the pit, though the earth itself was cold and slightly damp under his fingers. He sat up slowly, shuddering at the way the flesh around his wrists stuck to his skin, tacky and drying, stiffish. Stretching, but not stretching enough. He could see parts of a blurred tattoo on it – hairs – and he clamped his jaw tight against a rush of nausea and looked away. Bent his head and wiped his nose and lip on his shoulder, leaving a smear of blood behind.  
  
He was about a foot from the shrouded body and he inched closer on his knees, reaching hesitantly out. A little trickle of sand and rock chips tumbled down the side of the pit and Sam jerked back, looking up.  
  
"Slink!" Sam's voice was a cracked rasp, barely a whisper. "Help me!"  
  
"Too late, Sam. It's too late." Slink huddled on the edge of the pit, black eyes darting up and around, again and again. His tail was wrapped around his own ankle, tip twitching. "I told you, you should have –"  
  
" _Slink_. It's not – not too late. You can still help me." Sam stretched his arms up, shivering in the cold. "Just – help me get this off. Bring me my knife."  
  
"Ssaam...." Slink twitched, ducking down – flinched violently at a sudden, booming report. Gunshot – gun – _Dean_ , Sam was sure, and he pushed himself to his feet, dismayed to realize he was about three feet from the lip of the pit.  
  
"Dean! Dean, I'm here!"  
  
"Too late, too late, too late," Slink groaned, and then he darted away, out of sight. Sam lunged at the wall, digging his fingers in – sand instantly under his nails, cascading down around his wrists. He kicked at the wall, trying to get a toe-hold, but he couldn't stand on his left leg and kick – couldn't kick with his left leg, either, so he was stuck, cursing and trying not to fall over. Trying not to fall on the body that lay just behind him.  
  
There were noises above – scuffling and scraping, something being dragged over the sand. And then Dean was pushed over the pit-edge, tumbling down loose-limbed to sprawl at the bottom, one arm flung out, the other caught under him, his legs half bent. Out cold, blood trickling from his temple.  
  
"Fuck, fuck, _Dean_ , Jesus...." Sam went to his knees, pulling at his brother, tugging him over so that his face wasn't pressed into the sand; wiping at the blood with his fingers; pressing lightly on the bone under the rapidly bruising flesh. "Dean, damnit –"  
  
"Shouldn't have done it, he shouldn't have...." Slink appeared over the edge, eyes wide. "Shouldn't have –"  
  
"Shut _up_ ," Sam snarled, and Slink hissed, showing teeth.  
  
"Loved you and you never cared, loved you and you never loved me...."  
  
"Because you're a fucking.... _Shit_." Sam pushed at Dean's coat, feeling for the knife at his waist. He drew it from its sheath and reversed it awkwardly, slotting the razor-sharp blade carefully between his wrists, against the edge to the rapidly drying strips of skin. He started to saw at the skin, fingers aching from the cold. Shivering all over, now, down deep in his belly. It was making cutting himself free a little suicidal, but there was nothing else to be done.  
  
"Dean, Dean, c'mon, wake up," Sam muttered, biting his lip as the blade slipped a little, scraping his own skin. "Ow, damnit...."  
  
"You're _mine_ , Ssam, he said so, not his, not Dean's...." Slink shifted away again, making that little cat-mewl, wounded and desperate sounding and the first loop of the skin parted against the knife.  
  
"He just gets...creepier...all the time," Dean said, his voice thin and cracked, and Sam almost stabbed himself, fumbling the knife and nearly dropping it.  
  
" _Dean_ , Jesus, are you okay?"  
  
"Yeah, I...fuck." Dean struggled weakly for a moment, his limbs moving in an uncoordinated sort of swimming motion. And then he was sitting up, his hand going to his temple, hunching over. "Fucker."  
  
"You're bleeding, what happened?" Sam started sawing again, lip caught between his teeth.  
  
"Slink jumped me. After I shot that...that...."  
  
"Demon. I guess."  
  
"You _guess_? Here, gimme that before you slice yourself open, Christ's sake, Sam." Dean pulled Sam's bound hands down, taking control of the knife and Sam let him, curling his fingers out of the way so Dean could get a better angle. "What the hell is this?"  
  
"What you think," Sam said, and Dean's mouth went thin and tight. He sawed carefully – quickly – and a moment later the loops fell free and Sam twitched them away into the dirt, shuddering. He rubbed his wrists, flaking off dried blood and fluids, and Dean wiped the knife on his boot – slid it away.  
  
"You're kinda blue," Dean said. He shrugged his coat off, going up on his knees to free it from his legs and handed it over to Sam. Sam pulled it on gratefully, Dean's heat settling around him. He buttoned the front up and then looked up at the pit edge. The Victrola was still humming, a throbbing, staticky beat that made Sam feel smothered – buried.  
  
"So what _is_ it?"  
  
Sam rubbed at his forehead, trying to make his aching brain work. "It's a demon, it just...it said it crawled out of Hell. It said it was down deep, it said...said it 'ate' the Horseman."  
  
"Ate them?"  
  
"Like Famine did, with the – the demons."  
  
"I shot it. It went down, but...doesn't feel like it's gone," Dean said.  
  
"It's not. Fuck...." Sam rubbed harder and Dean reached out and caught his hands – tugged at them.  
  
"Sam?"  
  
"Can you make that fucking thing _stop_? It's...it's screwing with my head, Jesus, it...it hurts...." Sam felt a new trickle of blood on his upper lip, tickling and shockingly warm on his chilled skin and he felt Dean stand up – heard him scramble his way up the pit wall, cursing, rocks and sand cascading down behind him. Something thumped into the dirt next to him and Sam jerked – lifted his head to squint around.  
  
It was Malak, crouched at the head of the body, wings arched up high and twitching, pale eyes wide. His fingers kept reaching out and then pulling back, too nervous to actually touch. Hell, maybe he _couldn't_.... "Malak..."  
  
There was a sudden splintering crunch and the throbbing hum of the Victrola stopped and Sam drew in a hard, deep breath, some of the ache – some of the suffocating weight – dropping away.  
  
"Shouldn't have, he shouldn't have, hurt him...." Malak finally rested his fingertips on the head of the body and shuddered all over, looking up at Sam through tangled hair and long lashes. "He's here, Sam. Oh, wake him...." Then Malak launched himself upward and Sam heard a sharp cry – Dean, Malak, it was hard to say.  
  
"Sam!" Dean shouted, and Sam shoved his hands into the coat's pockets, searching...there. Holy water, holy oil, and another knife, smaller than the Bowie Dean still carried. Sam opened the knife and started cutting away the shroud.  
  
  
  
Dean slithered up and over the edge of the pit and then down the tumbled heap of the altar. The demon – thing – whatever the hell it was, was pawing at the sand, pushing itself upright in slow, jerky increments. There was a bloodless hole in the center of its forehead and for a fleeting moment, Dean wondered if they could dig the bullet back out – if it was just _in_ there, rattling around.  
  
And then he did a sharp, round-house kick to the record player that was propped on a tilting slab of rock, grinning in satisfaction as it shattered. The demon growled, wet and low, gesturing with its spidery fingers. With a whining shriek, a cloud of disembodied demons screamed down out of the rafters, swirling around Dean like a tornado.  
  
He reached for the Colt and then cursed as he realized his coat was down in the pit, wrapped around Sam. Wings battered at him, and Malak dove at the demons, crying out as they twisted around him, tumbling him through the air. The demon was crawling to its feet and Dean drew the knife – the demon-killing knife – and crouched, waiting.  
  
"Sam!" _Think of something, anything...._  
  
"From the abyss have I come and to the abyss you will go, your blood, your soul, your life...." The thing was unfolding upward, tall and taller still, a thing of bones and stretched flesh, gleaming wetly. The candle-flames flattened and wavered upright again, casting lurid shadows, and Dean could see viscera and ropey intestines – the stretched-cable of tendons and the sinew of muscle all sliding under rags of wet, torn-looking flesh. Legs that bent backward at the knee, like a dog's, and arms that unbent and unbent, umbrella-like, showing ragged wings between long, long fingers.  
  
Something hellish – something profoundly, utterly _of_ Hell, and Dean felt the spit dry in his mouth, his heart leaping against his breastbone, sweat sick and clammy along his ribs. Pure demon, its bones glowing through the putrefying shroud of flesh that hung on it, a sickly greenish-yellow that hurt Dean's eyes. He could see Slink just behind it, looking up with horror and longing, and he leapt _upward_ , teeth barred, and the thing shook him off like a cat, sending him reeling into shadow.  
  
" _Sam_ , it's now or never!" Something moved in the air behind the demon – something flew, crooked and faltering. Malak, his pale face slashed with blood, his wings tattered. "Malak, don't –!"  
  
" _No_!" Malak screamed. He darted at the demon, fingers hooked into claws, and the demon swatted him out of the air, sending him in a tumble of blood and feathers to the far corner of the ruined church.  
  
"Damnit.... Come on!" Dean spread his arms wide, glaring at the demon. "Come and get me, you ugly fucker! We beat you once, we can do it again!"  
  
The demon tipped its head down, white eyes reflecting golden candlelight, grinning through a jaw grotesquely unhinged and gaping. It opened its maw wider, the corrupt glow of itself expanding – strengthening – and roared.  
  
It was a sound so loud – so huge – it was nearly soundless, but it blasted Dean backward – shook the ruin like a child with a toy, sending rocks sliding and dust puffing upward – bringing the last of the roof crashing down. It thundered in Dean's skull and seemed to crush his bones – flatten his lungs – and he tried to curl up under it. Tried to cover his ears, protect his head. It _hurt_ , it was endless, it was intolerable, and Dean yelled, pain and fury.  
  
 _Close your eyes close your eyes close your eyes_  
  
Dean closed them.  
  
  
  
Sam hacked furiously at the shroud, yanking it back – unraveling it. Exposing layers of cleaner and cleaner cloth, until the body lay under only a thin scrim of pale white linen. The disembodied demons were roiling overhead, harrying Malak, and something was happening, something awful, something....  
  
The power, the _presence_ of the thing was overwhelming. Ice-cold suffocation, a void that was taking all the air, all the light, and Sam groaned under it, his fingers shaking, yanking away the last of the shroud.  
  
Snow white, nude, dark hair lying like feathers across his forehead, the body was covered from head to foot in wards, sigils, and symbols, in spell work and invocations, in bindings and blessings and seals. Sam gasped for air, coughing as blood flowed over his mouth. He licked and spat and spat again – reached into Dean's coat for the holy water – the oil, opening them with cramping, aching fingers and pouring them over the body.  
  
He washed away everything; every symbol drawn in blood and charcoal, in chalk and water, in earth and ash and semen. His palms rubbed over flesh that felt like marble – that slowly warmed and changed under his hands until Sam was touching flesh – true, living flesh, and not a statue – not an icon.  
  
In the sullied remains of the oil, he drew one, simple sigil on the chest of the body, his lips forming the words, his throat unable to make them. He could hear Dean shouting and then.... And then a noise, like the world cracking apart and the body – the man – opened his eyes.  
  
Blue eyes, like a summer sky, like the shifting, fathomless depths of a tropical sea. Eyes wide and laughing and full of wonder – surprise – love.  
  
 _Close your eyes close your eyes close your eyes_  
  
And then, for the second time in Sam's life, the world – ended.  
  
Sort of.

 

 

Some time later – minutes, hours, years – the roar and the light and the solid, bone-crunching pressure of things not meant for the Earth faded away and Sam found himself flat on his back. Or, not quite flat. Something was under his shoulders and neck, something not terribly soft but not rocks and Sam eased his eyes open, hoping....  
  
Hoping at least there wouldn't be agony, and there wasn't. There was only the soft glow of candles, and the wheeling stars overhead, and Dean peering down at him – Dean's thighs under his head. There was dried blood smeared sideways on Dean's temple, dust in his hair – in the lines at the corners of his eyes. Dean's fingers tugging absently through Sam's hair and Sam smiled slowly up at him.  
  
"Are we dead this time?"  
  
"Got lucky, Sammy. Made it again."  
  
Sam breathed in, slow and deep – let it out on a long sigh. "Good, that's good," he murmured, and Dean laughed, soft.  
  
"Yeah, I kinda like it, too."  
  
Sam lay there for a moment longer, enjoying the rough caress of Dean's callused fingers on his temple, and then he started to ease himself up. Dean got his hands under Sam's shoulders and helped, and then Sam was sitting, his legs splayed a little, Dean's coat puddled around his thighs. He felt – light. Nothing hurt anymore, and he flexed his thigh experimentally.  
  
"Oh, hey –"  
  
"What, your leg?" Dean grinned at him. "He said he'd fix it."  
  
"He – _oh_. Is he – where –?"  
  
"I'm here, Sam."  
  
Sam twisted around in the sand, looking up – and there he was. " _Castiel_...Cas, Jesus...."  
  
"It's good to see you, too, Samuel." Castiel crouched down next to Sam and Sam did his best to not notice that the angel was naked. Still naked, and smeared with dust and oil and bits of bitterbrush. Sam reached out and put his hand on Castiel's shoulder, fingertips on the soft hair at the nape of his neck. Castiel's skin was warm – alive – under Sam's palm and Sam squeezed gently.  
  
"Yeah, it's...God, I...I'm sorry I woke you. I know we said – that wasn't –"  
  
"There is no harm, Samuel." Castiel's hand drifted up to rest lightly on Sam's chest and Sam felt his eyes slip shut for a moment – felt his heart skip and then settle, steady and strong. "Your need was great."  
  
"Yeah. I just...you wanted to be at peace, Cas. You wanted to...rest."  
  
Castiel let his hand fall – tipped his head to the side, studying Sam. And then he stood up, pulling Sam with him, Dean on Sam's other side until they were all three on their feet. The walls of the church were flattened – blown out, as if a bomb had gone off, and Sam supposed maybe one had. The pit was still there, though half-filled with rubble, and the whole area seemed to have been smoothed over by a giant hand.  
  
"I feel as if I have rested long enough, Sam. I feel...refreshed." Castiel smiled at him then, slow and easy and _happy_ , and it felt like.... Like bubbles in Sam's chest, tickling. Like a warm, heavy shaft of sunlight, warming him to his bones.  
  
"You should, after the nap you've had," Dean said, and Castiel looked at him – looked around and up, breathing deep.  
  
"How long have I slept? How long...has it been?"  
  
Sam looked at Dean, who reached up and rubbed the back of his head, looking back at Sam with a slightly panicked look in his eyes.  
  
"Well, you know –"  
  
"Almost a hundred years."  
  
Castiel looked over at Sam, a brief expression of surprise on his face, and then he smiled again. "I'm sure much has changed since we last saw each other. You'll have much to teach me."  
  
"Yeah, we – huh?" Sam looked over at Dean, puzzled, and Dean just grinned back, slapping sand off his knees.  
  
"Yeah, guess who's coming to dinner, Sammy?"  
  
"But – I thought.... When we did this the first time, you said you were going to be the seal – you said you were going to keep Hell closed."  
  
"I did. I was. But I was only the...watchdog, as it were. The true seal lay further down." Castiel walked to the edge of the pit, looking down into it for a long moment. "The Earth is the seal. The land itself. We said the words, and empowered the symbols, but the Earth itself holds the power. We merely...woke it up."  
  
Castiel turned around, his arms spread out a little, his chin tipped back. The sky above them was taking on a very pale grey-green cast, the stars ever so slightly dimming. The sun was rising. "Here in this place, ancient man consecrated the ground to their gods and goddesses – to the living Earth and all things she gave life to. And then other men – men of my Father – dedicated it again, to Him." Castiel let his hands drop and walked back over to Sam and Dean, his feet scuffling a little in the sand.  
  
"Again and again, this land – this place – has been consecrated, held sacred – imbued with energy and prayers and sacrifices. It is a holy place. We only confirmed that – woke it to full life. I am no longer needed here."  
  
Dean nudged Sam in the ribs with his elbow, and when Sam looked at him, he pointed with a jerk of his chin. Sam followed the gesture to a tattered, parchment-looking husk that lay tangled in the altar remains. "Is that –?"  
  
"Yeah, that's...what's left of it." Dean toed at the husk with his boot and it crumbled a bit, flaking away.  
  
"What – what was it, Castiel?"  
  
Castiel came to stand by them, looking down at the husk with an expression of mild sorrow. "He was Aniquel, one of the seven great Princes. He was the serpent in the garden, who seduced Eve."  
  
"And a Grand Duke of Hell," Dean said softly, and Castiel nodded.  
  
"He was once as great as any of my brothers, but his exile twisted him, as it did all of them. And he poisoned his own Grace with the essences of the Horsemen, warping himself into something...." Castiel sighed, and turned away. "He became Abomination."  
  
Sam studied the husk for a moment. It was like a beetle's carapace, worn thin and nearly colorless, faintly stained a pale, milky amber along its length. It was subsiding into the earth as they stood there, and Sam stepped over it and went to Castiel – laid a hesitant hand on a naked shoulder.  
  
"I'm sorry."  
  
"So am I," Castiel said. "But it is done, now." He looked Sam up and down, and Sam felt a blush heating his cheeks. "You both appear to have suffered no ill effects of your time here. You are both well?"  
  
"We're – we're fine."  
  
"We're better than fine, Cas." Dean was digging around in the rubble and a moment later stood up with a little noise of triumph. He was holding Sam's undershirt, sweater and coat and Sam noticed for the first time that the cold was starting to seep back into the air all around them. He shrugged off Dean's coat and gratefully dressed in his own clothes – watched Dean pat down his pockets and make a little annoyed face when his holy water and oil flasks turned up missing.  
  
"Damnit. Have to get the Smith up at Elk Mountain to make me new ones. Least I still got my six-shooter," he smirked, holding up the Colt. "Not that it helped. Another bullet lost."  
  
"We don't usually need them," Sam said, and Dean shrugged – nodded – slid the gun away into his coat. There was a little noise behind him and he spun, his hand going for the gun again, but Castiel stepped up to him, his hand on Dean's arm.  
  
"There is no harm," he said, softly. He looked into the darkness, his hand held out, and a moment later Malak staggered out of the shadows, shedding sand and bits of grass, bruised and scraped all over, his wings flagging. The long flights trailed behind him in the dust, and he looked –  
  
"You look like the cat dragged you in and back out again," Dean said, but his voice was gentle.  
  
"Dean – are you safe? I tried – Dean, I tried...."  
  
"I know. You did good, Malak. You did real good."  
  
Malak stood there, shivering – blinking up at Dean, his child's face smeared with dust and blood, his eyes huge. He looked at Sam – at Castiel – and froze, staring. His chin trembled a little and his wings rustled up, fanning out as if in fear.  
  
"It is all right, brother. I won't hurt you," Castiel said, so softly, and Malak went to him, curling up close, his face hidden in Castiel's chest. Castiel hugged him gently, stroking the rough hair while Malak shuddered in his arms. Then he pulled carefully away, and wiped at his face with his knuckles. His wings lifted, but they were clean now – back to being a huge span of seen-and-not seen, feather and shadow and smoke. His bruises were gone, and he looked at Dean with a little smile.  
  
"I will wait for you at home, Dean. My brother can protect you until then."  
  
"Yeah, sure, Malak, that'd be – fine." Malak nodded – shot a long look at Sam and then a blinding smile at Castiel and then he was gone with a flick of his wings.  
  
"Michael still protects you," Castiel said softly, and Dean sighed.  
  
"I keep telling him to go home, but...I don't think he knows how."  
  
"He'd just mope, anyway," Sam said, coming up and bumping Dean with his hip. He'd found his gloves in his pocket and was pulling them on, rubbing his hands together. "He's got a crush on Dean."  
  
"Shut up, Sam."  
  
Castiel actually laughed, and it was.... It was like sweet air and sunlight, fresh and bright, and Sam and Dean couldn't help laughing with him.  
  
"We should return you to your friends. Dean told me how you came to be here," Castiel said.  
  
"Yeah – Lena's gonna be pissed that we just left."  
  
"Not like we had any choice," Sam said. He looked around at the ruins of the church one more time, at the bank of candles that Dean had probably righted and re-lit – at the heaped remains of the altar, the sacred space now useful for nothing more than desert mice and insects to live in. Remembering the day they'd found this place – this church. The day they'd decided that someone had to stand guard over Hell – had to be the Seal to keep evil from creeping back into the world. Remembering Castiel, exhausted and battered, heart-sick and lost. Left behind when all his brothers had quitted the Earth, longing for home but knowing – so very sure – that if he didn't stay, it would all begin again.  
  
They had traced the symbols, the wards and sigils, the blessings and the bindings onto his body, wrapping him in power – wrapping up his own power, cocooning him in it – stilling him, heart and soul. And then they had wrapped him in the shrouds, and laid him to rest under the earth – under the altar.  
  
They had said goodbye and walked away from their last link to the past – their last friend from Before, to start their own turn as watchers and guardians – keepers and protectors. To walk the earth forever, or until, perhaps, they felt they had earned...redemption. Forgiveness.  
  
Sam blinked – shivered, pulling his coat closer around his body. It wasn't about forgiveness, anymore. It was about...duty, affection. Love.  
  
"How did he – Aniquel – get out?" Sam asked over his shoulder, but Castiel didn't answer. Another voice did, from the far side of the pit, and Sam twitched in surprise.  
  
"Sstorm, Sam. It was the storm. I told you." Slink crept out of the rubble, his cob-web hair tangled with grasses, dulled with dust. His body streaked across with blood, glimmering lines in the candle light.  
  
"Slink –"  
  
"The storm broke something free. Magic, energy, old, old souls.... They're still here. Can't hide forever. They touched something. They broke something." Slink sidled closer, tail hanging limp – arms tucked tight around his ribs. "Should be home, when it storms, Ssam. Should be safe."  
  
"You know I can't always," Sam said softly, and Slink blinked and looked past him – flinched a little, and Sam felt Castiel come up beside him.  
  
"It's all right, brother," Castiel whispered, and Slink sank down onto his haunches, tears suddenly running free from his eyes, streaks of mercury-shine against his darkness.  
  
"I tried to – I kept – I protect him. I do. You can't...I won't go."  
  
"I don't ask it of you, brother," Castiel said, and Slink looked at Sam again – stood slowly and edged a little closer and then closer still, until Castiel's out-stretched fingertips rested lightly on his forehead. "Be comforted," Castiel whispered, and Slink shuddered – sighed – twisted away and darted past Sam, his palms brushing across Sam's arm.  
  
" _Mine_ , he hissed, and then he was gone.  
  
"That wasn't creepy at _all_ ," Dean said, and Sam snorted.  
  
"Better the Devil you know," he said, and Dean grinned and turned to Castiel, who was looking a little lost.  
  
"Cas, I need a bath, a meal and a drink, and not in that order. You wanna beam us up?"  
  
Castiel smiled at Dean – at Sam – and lifted his hands. "I do."  
  
"Don't say that at an altar," Sam said.  
  
"And can you beam on some clothes? Think of the children," Dean said.  
  
"You have not changed at all," Castiel said, and then his fingers touched Sam's forehead and the church – the moon-cold sands of the Dust Bowl – were gone.  
  
  
  
  
  
 _Michael and Lucifer met with the shock of worlds colliding, each riding the wrong vessel – each fighting for a control They could not believe they were losing. Each crying out in horror and despair as the Grace of God was stripped from Them, scattering to the aether. As They became Their very essences – the most basic part of Themselves: passionate desire, an endless, tireless need to protect.  
  
Love and jealousy would come later, learned over years. But as the last of Their powers – Their celestial beings – sleeted away, four lone figures were left. Two nothing more than shells of their former selves and two....  
  
Two with a mote of Grace lodged deep in their souls. Grace that would sustain and protect them – propel and enliven them. Grace of God, angelic power, life everlasting.  
  
The Earth, torn and burned and shaken to her core, settled again, the sea rushing in where it had been pushed away, the land settling back onto bones that had broken and slid and tumbled. Everything forever changed. The Heavenly Host saw that it was good, and retired in ranks to a higher place, leaving the atmosphere aching with the cessation of their voices.  
  
The last smokes of conquered demons eddied away, sinking into nothing, and the fires of Hell began, one by one, to go out.  
  
And Sam and Dean Winchester...woke up._

**Author's Note:**

> Something I don't normally do, but I felt this story deserved them. With sincerest apologies to ignipes, we have two angels falling to earth like meteors, and hitting in the Salton Sea, California, so hard they create a crater hundreds of miles wide.
> 
> But it doesn't wipe out life as we know it, or plunge the planet into a nuclear winter. We'll call that the Miracle of Fiction. :)
> 
> But what it does do is destroy a lot of the southwest of the country, pulverizing California, Nevada, most of Oregon and some of Washington, most of Arizona and some of Mexico and quite a bit of the Pacific sea-floor.
> 
> The Rim where we first see Sam and Dean has crept up to the south-west tail of the Grand Canyon, and that's the Colorado River falling over the edge like an American Angel Falls.
> 
> New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and a bit of southern Colorado have become the Dust Bowl, and all of Louisiana and Mississippi, as well as some of Arkansas have become a vast, malarial Delta.
> 
> No one knows what's happening east of the Mississippi, and Canada has become a forbidding, dense and frozen forest.
> 
> Hole-in-the-Wall I envisioned as a cave, or cave system, in the [Timpanogos Cave National Monument](http://www.utah.com/nationalsites/timp_cave.htm) in Utah and Sam and Dean's lodge is located along the [Flaming Gorge](http://www.wyomingtourism.org/overview/Flaming-Gorge-Recreation-Area/32475) in Wyoming.
> 
> The oldest church in the US – and the site of even older American Indian sacred ground – is the [San Miguel Mission](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Miguel_Mission) in New Mexico.
> 
>  _Malak_ is 'angel' in Arabic.
> 
> Using the supposition of horses traveling at approximately thirty miles in a day, we get this:  
> Ten days ride from the Rim to Hole-in-the-Wall.  
> Seven days ride from Hole-in-the-Wall to Sam'n'Dean's lodge.  
> Eight days ride from Sam'n'Dean's house to Steamboat Springs/Mama Lena's.


End file.
